"The new fiction is detestable," I said hotly, "both in style and morality. Even as a question of literature I wonder at your condescending to read any of it. The woman whose dirty book I have just thrown away—and I feel no compunction for having done it—is destitute of grammar as well as decency."
"Oh, but the critics don't notice that," she interrupted, with a delicate mockery vibrating in her voice. "It is apparently not their business to assist in preserving the purity of the English language. What they fall into raptures over is the originality of the 's****l' theme, though I should have thought all such matters were as old as the hills. I never read reviews as a rule, but I did happen to come across one on the book you have just drowned,—and in it the reviewer stated he had cried ov
