Mr. Marshall published with _The Graftons_ an exceedingly interesting Introduction, containing a defense of his methods which is not needed by intelligent readers, but which may enlighten those who do not understand what he is about. In a personal letter, however, he expressed himself in words that I like better than his printed apologia. "The Grafton family isn't so rich in varied interest as the Clinton family, but I hope they will make their friends. I think they are as 'nice' a family as any I've drawn. I set out simply to show them in their country home, and make their country neighbours display themselves in the light of their critical humour, without much idea of a story. It turned into something rather different, and I'm not quite sure about it yet. And it has taken two books to work it out." Now the reason why I like this ink-epistle better than the formal preface is because in the latter Mr. Marshall seemed to think it necessary to reply to those critics who said he ought to discuss in his novels the economic questions concerned with the tenure of the land. If he should by some evil temptation make economic questions the basis of his stories of English country life, he would commit the cardinal sin that has corrupted so much of contemporary fiction, the sin that I condemned at the outset of this essay. The most conspicuous element in his art is Charm. If some one should persuade him that he ought to become more "serious," his novels would lose their atmosphere; and he might find himself writing like that earnest student of modern movements, Mrs. Humphry Ward. I am aware that the most insulting epithet that can be applied to a book, or a play, or a human being is the word "Puritan"; and I remember reading a review somewhere of _Abington Abbey_ which commented rather satirically on the interview between Grafton and Lassigny, and most satirically of all on the conclusion of the interview, which left the stiff, prejudiced, puritanical British parent in possession of the field. But once more, Mr. Marshall is not trying to prove a thesis; he is representing the Englishman and the Frenchman in a hot debate, where neither is right and neither is wrong, but where each is partly right and partly wrong. Each says in the heat of the contest something injudicious, even as men do when they are angry. But when Lassigny literally takes French leave, we do not care who has scored the most points; the real winner is the one who is not present--the girl herself. For when two men fight about a woman, as they do somewhere every day, the truly important question is not, which man wins the fight? The only real question is, does the woman win?