One may well wonder, though, in what spirit the man who is deeply stirred by Victoria Cross and Elinor Glyn reads such masterpieces of prose narrative as _Une Vie_ and _Madame Bovary_ and _Mademoiselle de Maupin_. They are bound in the same lurid cover, printed on the same absorbent paper, and yet it is hard to believe that a man can be moved equally by what is good and by what is bad. Is it not more likely that he will be shocked and a little disgusted by Maupassant’s detachment and cold restraint? “Pretty hot stuff,” he will say to himself of _Une Vie_, but will add, “most awful filth.” And he will be ashamed of the book, and secrete it at the bottom of his chest of drawers. A melancholy reflection. It is, after all, of little matter that two thousand people should in the course of three years purchase at one shop a rather silly, sensual, sentimental book. But it is a little sad that only thus, in this form, and in this type of shop, should be procurable in the English language a complete translation of one of the world’s greatest novels, a little sad that even then it should be only read by such a person, and in such a spirit. Sad though for the man of letters, not for the advocate of social progress. I am convinced that these books are as completely harmless as any book that may possibly encourage people to think for themselves can be harmless. There appeared a few months ago an article, I believe, by St John Ervine, maintaining that the effect on the mind of the public of books such as _The Way of an Eagle_, with their scenes of brutality and masculine domination, was pernicious. And certainly they make melancholy enough reading. But what are they, after all, but an expression for our eternal human impulse to be swept off our feet, to be subjugated by a force outside of and stronger than ourselves. And cannot we find in literature equivalents enough for the cracked whip and the submissive cheek of an Ethel Dell romance? Equivalents, but not parallels; for the best seller is written for women, usually by women. And it is by a masculine intelligence that the masterpieces of prose literature have been produced. A man would, in search of such an equivalent, choose an experience of which he was the object, not the subject. He would not write of the dominant male, but of the siren. “Is it to be a kiss or a blow?” asks the hero of popular fiction. In Turgenev, that woman who “when she comes towards one, seems as though she is bringing all the happiness of one’s life to meet one,” leans forward across a table and taps the nails of one hand against the nails of the other. “Tell me, tell me,” she says, “is it true, they say you are going to be married?”