worthy persons, they are artists scrupulously employing their available means to produce a preconceived effect, namely, to appear lovable. They are acting a part—one of the several parts which they act; and perhaps they are doing it very well indeed. Perhaps they are throwing themselves so earnestly into their part that they conceive themselves to be essentially and mainly lovers, when, as a matter of fact, they are essentially and mainly a real estate agent and a cook, an egotistical novelist and a pianist, a financier and a female athlete, or a professor and a semi-professional bridge player. Presently they neglect their make-up and forget their cues. They stop acting. They slip back into their main business. They lapse to the level of their natural instincts and emotions. And the moment they begin to be entirely natural, they begin to bore each other; they begin to fall in hate. They look at each other with monoptic naturalistic gaze; and they fall in hate with a careful selection of the hateful qualities possessed by—by all men and women.
I have known in the entire course of my life perhaps half a dozen men and women who were invariably charming, the very sight of whom rejoiced and refreshed any company in which they appeared. They have a natural genius for being charming, no doubt; but they have something more than that. They have a delight in practising the fine art of charm; they understand the technique of charm; they have drilled themselves in the expression of charm, till they are accomplished artists, as in
