perpetual liaisons. Externally she was this, and yet what did
Balzac, that great master of human psychology, write of her in the
intimacy of a private correspondence?

She is a female bachelor. She is an artist. She is generous. She
is devoted. She is chaste. Her dominant characteristics are those
of a man, and therefore, she is not to be regarded as a woman. She
is an excellent mother, adored by her children. Morally, she is
like a lad of twenty; for in her heart of hearts, she is more than
chaste--she is a prude. It is only in externals that she comports
herself as a Bohemian. All her follies are titles to glory in the
eyes of those whose souls are noble.

A curious verdict this! Her love-life seems almost that of neither
man nor woman, but of an animal. Yet whether she was in reality
responsible for what she did, when we consider her strange
heredity, her wretched marriage, the disillusions of her early
life--who shall sit in judgment on her, since who knows all?





THE MYSTERY OF CHARLES DICKENS


Perhaps no public man in the English-speaking world, in the last
century, was so widely and intimately known as Charles Dickens.
From his eighteenth year, when he won his first success in
journalism, down through his series of brilliant triumphs in