And it is because the climax of such a relationship comes then, that I have preferred to write of it in the form of an essay, rather than of a story; a short story must close on a dramatic curtain. And if a situation does not offer a dramatic curtain, it is wrong to make a story of it: it would be either a bad story because it would have no climax, or it would be an untrue story with the high light flung on a climax that was manufactured and incidental, instead of the significant, the universal moment, the hour of jealousy and self-contempt, the hour when a strong man sits before a telephone watching the second hand eat away the minutes. It could be done, though, in a novel; it would make an admirable opening chapter to the story of a woman’s life: it would have to be told probably through the woman’s eyes; its early _motif_ would be the arrogance of youth as it strides contemptuously over age. There would be the middle years of turmoil and success, and then the story would turn back upon itself. The woman would fall in love with a younger man and would find herself, in her turn, being used as a stepping-stone for youth. And as she stands watching youth ride past her, she would know all that her early lover had known and suffered. The love of a mature woman for a boy is a theme that has been used often enough, especially in French fiction, but never quite in this way, perhaps, never as a key to unlock the heart of a man’s last love. But then it is a woman’s theme perhaps rather than a man’s; and we must remember always that, with the exception of some dozen books, the masterpieces of prose literature, and indeed of all literature and all art, are the work of a masculine intelligence. It may be that the contemporary women novelists are better than the contemporary men novelists. It may be that to the nineteen-eighties the great writers of the post-war period will be May Sinclair and Clemence Dane, and Rebecca West and Sheila Kaye-Smith. It may be, I do not know. I should myself doubt whether there is to-day a single woman writer, with the possible exception of Edith Wharton, who can begin to stand comparison with Thomas Hardy and George Moore, with Cavell, with Conrad, with Max Beerbohm, with Galsworthy, and with de la Mare. But one hesitates to dogmatise on living writers. This, at least, is sure. For many hundreds of years there have been pictures painted, and poetry written, and stories told. There have been a few writers of genius, and many painters, and poets, and musicians of great talent. There have been one or two minor poetesses, and there have been Jane Austen, and George Eliot, and George Sand. Women have inspired books, but men have written them, written them, perhaps, I sometimes think, chiefly with the object of giving pleasure to woman, of making themselves attractive to her. The monkey and the West Indian savage woes its mate with dancing, and ornament, and display. The mediæval baron instituted tournaments and