And while we ate and drank and laughed and chatted, the books around us were weaving their spells. Even before the invention of printing books were "love's purveyors." Was it not a book that sent Paolo and Francesca for ever wandering on that stormy wind of passion and of death? And nowadays the part played by books in human drama is greater than we perhaps realise. Apart from their serious influence as determining destinies of the character, what endless opportunities they afford to lovers, who perhaps are denied all other meeting-places than may be found on the tell-tale pages of a marked volume. The method is so easy and so unsuspect. You have only to put faint pencil-marks against the tenderest passages in your favourite new poet, and lend the volume to Her, and She has only to leave here and there the dropped violet of a timid confirmatory initial, for you to know your fate. And what a touchstone books thus become! Indeed they simplify love-making, from every point of view. With books so inexpensive and accessible to all as they are to-day, no one need run any risks of marrying the wrong woman. He has only to put her through an unconscious examination by getting her to read and mark a few of his favourite authors, and he is thus in possession of the master clues of her character. With a list of her month's reading and a photograph, a man ought to be able to make up his mind about any given woman, even though he has never spoken to her. "Name your favourite writer" should be one of the first questions in the Engagement Catechism. There is, indeed, no such short cut to knowledge of each other as a talk about books. One short afternoon is enough for any two book-lovers, though they may have met for the first time in the morning, to make up their minds whether or not they have been born for each other. If you are agreed, say, in admiring Meredith, Hardy, Omar Khayyam, and Maeterlinck,--to take four particularly test-authors,--there is nothing to prevent your marrying at once. Indeed, a love for any one of these significant writers will be enough, not to speak of an admiration for "Aucassin and Nicolete." Now, Nicolete and I soon found that we had all these and many another writer in common, and before our lunch was ended we were nearer to each other than many old friends. The heart does not more love the heart that loves it than the brain loves the brain that comprehends it; and, whatever else was to befall us, Nicolete and I were already in love with each other's brains. Whether or not the malady would spread till it reached the heart is the secret of some future chapter. CHAPTER VI A FAIRY TALE AND ITS FAIRY TAILORS