And every time I read a Wells novel my little old lady folds her hands and sits up very primly and says, "Aha, you're reading something of that man's again. Well, I'm not asleep--I'm right on the job and I know just what I think of _him_." So you see! And the worst--or the best--of it is that I agree with her. I can't like him. I read along and it's all so reasonable--he's so clever and he _thinks_; but his conclusions are all so weak--if he comes to any. One passage in _The Passionate Friends_ has made me furious. How can a man who's at all worth while be so really wicked--(another word gone out of style). I mean this: It is manifestly true that for the most of us free talk, intimate association, and any real fellowship between men and women turns with extreme readiness to love. And that being so, it follows that under existing conditions the unrestricted meeting and companionship of men and women in society is a notorious sham, a merely dangerous pretence of encounters. The safe reality beneath those liberal appearances is that a woman must be content with the easy friendship of other women and of one man only, letting a superficial friendship towards all other men veil impassable abysses of separation, and a man must in the same way have one sole woman intimate.... To me that is an intolerable state of affairs, but is reality. Now can you suppose that is Wells's own reasoning that he puts into the mouth of his unfortunate hero? Talk about Edith Wharton being thin-lipped in the pursuit of her heroines--that's a great deal better than being loose-lipped; don't you agree with me? It may be true, and I rather think to some extent it is true, that a man cannot have an absorbing friendship with a woman and not run the risk of falling in love. But what does that prove? That he should be allowed free rein and carry on as many _liaisons_ veiled under the name of friendship as he chooses? Or unveiled, rather, for Wells seems to want everything in the open. He's like a child who says: Here's a very dangerous beast in a flimsy, inadequate cage. Frequently he escapes from it and has to be put back in. Let's abolish the cage and let the beast run about openly, doing what it wants. And the good old-fashioned word for that beast is lust, and it should be caged; if the cage is getting more and more inadequate it's only a piece with what Agnes Repplier calls our loss of nerve. How I liked that article of hers! What in the name of sense are we in this world for if not to build up a character? That's all that amounts to anything, and it comes from countless denials and countless responses to duty. And what Goethe said, some time ago, is still everlastingly true: "_Entbehren sollst Du, sollst entbehren!_" (Deny yourself, deny, deny.) He ought to know, too, because he tried indulgence, goodness knows, and knew the dregs at the bottom of that cup. And I can't forgive Wells. He knows better than to let people make