MY DEAR "MAURICE"--You will remember that afternoon in Calvados last
summer when your black Persian "Minoulooshe," who had walked behind us for
a good mile, heard a wing flutter in a bramble-bush? For a long time we
called her endearing names in vain. She seemed resolute to spend her night
among the brambles. She had interrupted a conversation, often interrupted
before, upon certain thoughts so long habitual that I may be permitted to
call them my convictions. When I came back to London my mind ran again and
again to those conversations and I could not rest till I had written out
in this little book all that I had said or would have said. Read it some
day when "Minoulooshe" is asleep.