mild touch-me-not or warner-off to over-susceptible ladies, for these sort of absurd fellows generally flatter themselves that every woman who sees them is bound to fall in love with them on the spot. This particular "boy" was constantly in and out of our house; he liked Honoria because she made such game of him and his stand-offish manner. I suppose the poor devil was so flattered everywhere else (on account of those moustaches) that he found some comfort in being ridiculed now and then. And my wife had a great talent for ridicule, an immense and ever-developing talent; she "chaffed" people unmercifully; in fact, after the novelty of our marriage had worn off a bit, she began to "chaff" me. I am bound to confess I did not quite like this, but I forbore to complain,-she had such high spirits, I thought, and she did not really mean to wound my feelings.

However, taking it all in all, home was not the home I had hoped for. There was no repose in it,no relief from the business fatigues and worries of the day. And the whole place was always horribly redolent of tobacco-tobacco-smoke permeated every room in it, including even the big dining-room-and the smell of cigars was in my nostrils morning, noon and night. All those "boys" smoked, of course; they were very friendly, and used to sit chatting away with me after dinner till long past midnight (Honoria being of the party). I

could scarcely turn them out without being rude, and naturally I did not wish to be rude to my wife's old friends. I had my own friends also, but they were men of a different stamp. They were older, more serious, more settled in their modes of life; they liked to talk on the politics, progress and science of the age; and though they admired Honoria (for she could converse well on any subject) they could not get on with the "boys," no, not with any of them. So one by one they dropped off, and by-and-by a sort of desolate shutout feeling began to steal over me, and I wondered ruefully if I should be obliged to go on living like this for the rest of my days? I sat down in my arm-chair one evening and seriously considered my position. Honoria was out; she had gone to supper with her friend Mrs. Stirling, of Glen Ruach (the misguided woman who had presented her with that wedding-gift of the cigar and ash tray), who was staying in London for a couple of weeks, and I knew they and their "set" would make a night of it. I had not been asked to join the party-I was evidently not wanted. I sat, as I said, in my chair, and looked at the fire; it was cold weather, and the wind whistled drearily outside the windows, and I took to hard and earnest thinking. Was I happy in my married life? No! most emphatically not. But why? I asked myself. What prevented my happiness? Honoria was a bright woman, a clever

woman, handsome, good-tempered and cheerful as the day, never ill, never dull, never cross. What on earth was my complaint? I sighed heavily; I felt I was unreasonable; and yet, I had certainly missed something out of my life-something I felt the want of now. Was it the frequent visitations of "the boys" that fretted my mind? No, not exactly; for, as I said before, they were thoroughly harmless fellows. And as for Honoria herself, whatever her faults (or what I considered her faults) might be, she was good as gold, with a frank, almost blunt straightforwardness and honesty about her that was really admirable-in fact, she was the kind of woman to knock down a man who would have dared to offer her any insult; and thus far her "mannishness" set her above all suspicion of deceit or infidelity. It was impossible to doubt her word-she never told a lie-and she had a sort of military-disciplined idea of honour, rare to find in the feminine nature. Yes, her sterling virtue was unquestionable. What qualities, then, did she lack? Why did I feel that she was in a way removed from me, and that instead of having a woman by my side, I had a sort of hybrid human growth which was neither man nor woman,—which confused and perplexed me instead of helping and comforting me, and which filled me with surprise rather than respect? Again I sighed, and stirring the smouldering fire into a blaze watched its flickering flashes on the wall of the room,

It was a large room- —we called it the library, because there were books in it. Not rare volumes by any means, still what there were I liked; in fact they were mostly mine. My wife read nothing but the newspapers; she devoured the Referee on Sundays, and she took the Sporting Times because she always had certain bets on certain racing events. Needless to say I objected to her betting, but with no result beyond the usual laugh, and the usual, "Don't be a goose, Willie; it's all right! I never bet with your money!" Which was true enough. She had turned out another sporting novel at a “dead heat," as she herself expressed it; the publisher had paid her well for it, and she certainly had every right to do as she liked with her own earnings. Moreover, she generally won her bets, that was the odd part of it; she seemed to have an instinctive faculty for winning. Her losses were always small, her gains always large. In fact, as I have already remarked, she was a wonderful woman!

Apropos of this last novel of hers, I reflected uneasily that I had not yet read a word of it. It was only just published, I had seen no reviews of it, and she seemed to attach no importance to it herself. She had no real love for literature; she called all the ancient classic writers "old bores," and all the works of the after-giants, such as Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, Walter Scott, Dickens, or Thackeray, "stuff and rubbish."

She

wrote a novel as she wrote a letter-almost without taking thought, and certainly without correction. She would hand the proofs over to one of "the boys" who knew all about sporting terms, that he might see whether her slang was correct, and when his hall-mark said (as it did once, for I saw it pencilled on the margin of a chapter), "Bully for you!" off the whole thing went to the publisher without further anxiety or trouble on her part. And when people said to me, sweetly, "Your wife is quite a literary genius!" in the usual humbugging way of polite society, I was very well aware that they didn't mean it; I knew in my very heart of hearts that Honoria, judged strictly from an art and letters point of view, was a fraud,-positively a fraud! The thought stabbed me to the soul, but still I had to think it if I would be at peace with my own conscience. I am not a clever man myself, yet I know very well what female literary "genius" is. We have it in the poems of Elizabeth Barrett and the romances of Georges Sand, and when we consider the imperishable work of such women as these, the sporting novels of even a Honoria HatwellTribkin sink into shadowy insignificance! And I am a great believer in woman's literary capability. I think that, given a woman with a keen instinct, close observation and large sympathies, she ought to be able to produce greater masterpieces of literature than a man. But there is no necessity for her to part with her womanly