The present happy era of fiction closes a story abruptly at the altar or else begins it immediately after the ceremony.  Thence the enthralled reader is conducted through rapture, doubt, misunderstanding, indifference, complications, recrimination, and estrangement to the logical end in cynicism and the divorce court.

In the books which women write, the hero of the story shoulders the blame, and often has to bear his creator’s vituperation in addition to his other troubles.  When a man essays this theme in fiction, he shows clearly that it is the woman’s fault.  When the situation is presented outside of books, the happily married critics distribute condemnation in the same way, it being customary for each partner in a happy marriage to claim the entire credit for the mutual content.

[Sidenote:  Pursuit and Possession]

Over the afternoon tea cups it has been decided with unusual and refreshing accord, that “it is pursuit and not possession with a man.”  True—­but is it less true with women?

When Her Ladyship finally acquires the sealskin coat on which she has long set her heart, does she continue to scan the advertisements?  Does she still coddle him who hath all power as to sealskin coats, with tempting dishes and unusual smiles?  Not unless she wants something else.

Still, it is woman’s tendency to make the best of what she has, and man’s to reach out for what he has not.  Man spends his life in the effort to realise the ideals which, like will-o’-the-wisps, hover just beyond him.  Woman, on the contrary, brings into her life what grace she may, by idealising her reals.

In her secret heart, woman holds her unchanging ideal of her own possible perfection.  Sometimes a man suspects this, and loves her all the more for the sweet guardian angel which is thus enthroned.  Other men, less fine, consider an ideal a sort of disease—­and they are usually a certain specific.

But, after all, men are as women make them.  Cleopatra and Helen of Troy swayed empires and rocked thrones.  There is no woman who does not hold within her little hands some man’s achievement, some man’s future, and his belief in woman and God.

She may fire him with high ambition, exalt him with noble striving, or make him a coward and a thief.  She may show him the way to the gold of the world, or blind him with tinsel which he may not keep.  It is she who leads him to the door of glory and so thrills him with majestic purpose, that nothing this side Heaven seems beyond his eager reach.

[Sidenote:  The Potter’s Hand]

Upon his heart she may write ecstasy or black despair.  Through the long night she may ever beckon, whispering courage, and by her magic making victory of defeat.  It is for her to say whether his face shall be world-scarred and weary, hiding tragedy behind its piteous lines; whether there shall be light or darkness in his soul.  He cannot escape those soft, compelling fingers; she is the arbiter of his destiny—­for like clay in the potter’s hands, she moulds him as she will.