Produced by Martin Agren, Leonard Johnson and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. IF ONLY ETC. BY F.C. PHILIPS AUTHOR OF "AS IN A LOOKING GLASS," ETC. ETC. LEIPZIG BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 1904. TO MY OLD FRIEND AND COLLABORATOR, SYDNEY GRUNDY, I DEDICATE THESE PAGES. F.C. PHILIPS. CONTENTS. IF ONLY ONE CAN'T ALWAYS TELL SONGS. AFTER VICTOR HUGO, ARMAND SILVESTRE, CHARLES ROUSSEAU AND THE VICOMTE DE BORELLI LOVE WENT OUT WHEN MONEY WAS INVENTED A PUZZLED PAINTER. (WRITTEN IN COLLABORATION WITH THE LATE SIR AUGUSTUS HARRIS) * * * * * IF ONLY. CHAPTER I. There is a vast deal talked in the present day about Freewill. We like to feel that we are independent agents and are ready to overlook the fact that our surroundings and circumstances and the hundred and one subtle and mysterious workings of the fate we can none of us escape, control our actions and are responsible for our movements, and make us to a great extent what we are. A man is not even a free agent when he takes the most important step of his whole life, and marries a wife. He is impelled to it by considerations outside of himself; it affects not only his own present and future, but that of others, very often, and he must be guided accordingly. Emerson says; "The soul has inalienable rights, and the first of these is love," but he does not say marriage. Love is the business of the idle and the idleness of the busy, but marriage is quite another affair--a grave matter, and not to be undertaken lightly, since it is the one step that can never be retraced, save through the unsavoury channels of shame and notoriety, or death itself. But perhaps Jack Chetwynd was hampered with fewer restraining influences than most men, for he was alone in the world, without kith or kin, and might be fairly allowed to please himself, and pleasing himself in this case meant leading to the altar, or rather to the Registry Office, Miss Bella Blackall, music-hall singer and step dancer.