First the Blade

The hero is called Justin, and the girl, Laura—Laura Valentine. The readers might dislike it, but it is the author's turn to choose, and honestly, if you think it over, you will find that 'Laura' is the only name for her. She is real enough already to make me sure of that. Laura—grave, graceful, ageless word, fits like a glove my Laura, our Laura, so unmodern in her ways and thoughts, for all she was born in '94. Yet the name stands, to you, for ringlets and bottleneck shoulders, for simpers and sighs and Harry and Lucy? But those were its evil days, when it was befrilled and crinolined by the same spirit that figleafs Apollo and measures the Milo Venus for a pair of stays. The name has older memories, older even than its Italian gardens and passionate poets, memories old as sunshine and song and the laurel tree itself. Indeed, that enchanted bush, that grave tree with blood-red berries, that panting girl within stiff bark and quiet leaves, reminds me not a little of Laura, our own bewildered Laura, when Love, the crazy torch-bearer, came rioting down the Brackenhurst lanes, to break through the garden fences of her ignorance, and, entering, set the quiet house of her mind afire.