Another great difference between the Short-story and the Novel lies in the fact that the Novel, nowadays at least, must be a love-tale, while the Short-story need not deal with love at all. Although "Vanity Fair" was a Novel without a hero, nearly every other Novel has a hero and a heroine, and the novelist, however unwillingly, must concern himself in their love-affairs. But the writer of Short-stories is under no bonds of this sort. Of course he may tell a tale of love if he choose, and if love enters into his tale naturally and to its enriching, but he need not bother with love at all unless he please. Some of the best of Short-stories are love-stories too,--Mr. Aldrich's "Margery Daw," for instance, Mr. Stimpson's "Mrs. Knollys," Mr. Bunner's "Love in Old Clothes;" but more of them are not love-stories at all. If we were to pick out the ten best Short-stories, I think we should find that fewer than half of them made any mention at all of love. In "The Snow Image" and in "The Ambitious Guest," in "The Gold-Bug" and in "The Fall of the House of Usher," in "My Double and how he Undid me," in "Devil-Puzzlers," in "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," in "Jean-ah Poquelin," in "A Bundle of Letters," there is little or no mention of the love of man for woman, which is the chief topic of conversation in a Novel. While the Novel cannot get on without love, the Short-story can. Since love is almost the only thing which will give interest to a long story, the writer of Novels has to get love into his tales as best he may, even when the subject rebels and when he himself is too old to take any interest in the mating of John and Joan. But the Short-story, being brief, does not need a love-interest to hold its parts together, and the writer of Short-stories has thus a greater freedom: he may do as he pleases; from him a love-tale is not expected.