2d Qui hi. “Is it? Then I'll go out with 'Gentleman Dodd.'” -------------- TO MY MALE READERS. I SEE with some surprise that there still linger in the field of letters writers who think that, in fiction, when a personage speaks with an air of conviction, the sentiments must be the author's own. (When two of his personages give each other the lie, which represents the author? both?) I must ask you to shun this error; for instance, do not go and take Eve Dodd's opinion of my heroine, or Mrs. Bazalgette's, for mine. Miss Dodd, in particular, however epigrammatic she may appear, is shallow: her criticism _peche par la base._ She talks too much as if young girls were in the habit of looking into their own minds, like little metaphysicians, and knowing all that goes on there; but, on the contrary, this is just what women in general don't do, and young women can't do. No male will quite understand Lucy Fountain who does not take “instinct” and “self-deception” into the account. But with those two dews and your own intelligence, you cannot fail to unravel her, and will, I hope, thank me in your hearts for leaving you something to study, and not clogging my sluggish narrative with a mass of comment and explanation. The End. End of Project Gutenberg's Love Me Little, Love Me Long, by Charles Reade