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 so to be come at, romantic lovers fret themselves to a fever, and decadent heroes and heroines tear each other to bits, and ignorant contemporary husbands and wives separate with bitter recriminations, each charging that the mysteriously rewarding self sought in the other was not to be found."

"Well?"

"Well, the reason it was not found is that it was not there. There is no such secret garden; there is no such mysterious self to reward the mystics of the romantic quest."

"Don't you think so?"

"No," I said, "I think, up to a certain point, our brutal modern naturalists have followed truth much more faithfully than the poets. And I believe that in educating our young people we had better follow them to the same point. My novelist friend is right in holding to his theory that Judith O'Grady and the Colonel's lady are much the same beneath the skin."

"Bah!" cried Cornelia. "If you say that again, I shall hate you."

"And I shall ask to be forgiven," I said, "and you will forgive me so graciously that I shall sin again. But I'm very serious about this. Judith