We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.

Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.

Henry James seems most entirely in his element, doing that is to say what everything favors his doing, when it is a question of recollection. The mellow light which swims over the past, the beauty which suffuses even the commonest little figures of that

The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

The chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of, said Pericles, himself a much-talked-of-man.

How are we to account for the strange human craving for the pleasure of feeling afraid which is so much involved in our love of ghost stories?

And now more than anything I want beautiful prose. I relish it more and more exquisitely.