But all this time, while I have been giving a free rein to my autobiographic instincts, the question still remains unanswered, Why is human nature so prone to think it has been travestied that it becomes impervious to reason on the subject the moment the idea has entered the mind? Once lodged, I have never known such an idea dislodged, however fantastic. Why is it that if, like Mrs. Clifford, one has the good fortune to evolve a type, no one can believe it is not an individual? Why does not the outraged friend console himself with the remembrance that if he is one of many others who are feeling equally harrowed, he cannot really be the object of a malignant spite, carefully disguised till then under the apparel of a cheerful friendship? I think an answer--a partial answer--to the latter question may be found in the fact that balm was never yet poured on a wounded spirit by the assurance that there are thousands of others exactly like itself. We can all endure to be lampooned. (I have even known a man who was deeply disappointed when he was forced to believe that he had not been victimised.) But to be told we are one of a herd! This flesh and blood cannot tolerate. It is unthinkable; a living death. That we who "look before and after," and "whose sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught"; that _we_, lonely, superb, pining for what is not, misunderstood by our nearest and dearest, who don't know, and never _can_ know Half the reasons why we smile or sigh (unless, indeed, we are autobiographists: then they know _all_ the reasons)--that WE should be confused with the vast mob of foolish, sentimental spinsters, or pedantic clerics, or egotistic old bachelors! Away!--away! The reeling mind stops its ears against these obscene suggestions. The only alternative which remains is that an unscrupulous novelist has _heard_ of us--nothing more likely--without being actually acquainted with us, and has listened to garbled accounts of us from our so-called friends; or has actually met us at a bazaar or a funeral, though of course he professes to have forgotten the meeting; has been impressed with our subtle personality--nothing more likely--has felt an envious admiration of what we ourselves value but little--our social charm--and has yielded--nothing more likely--to the ignoble temptation of caricaturing qualities which he cannot emulate. Or perhaps he has known us for years, and has shown a mysterious indifference to our society, an impatience of our deeper utterances, which we can now, _at last_, trace to its true source, a guilty consciousness of premeditated treachery which has led him to strike us in a dastardly manner, which we can indeed afford--being what we are--to forgive, but which we shall never forget. And if an opportunity offers later on, it is possible that an unprejudiced and judicial mind may feel called upon to indicate what it thinks of such conduct.