Beatrice! }
Laura! }
My old girl’s got several babies that are mine, But _thou_ be my
spiritual concubine,
Beatrice! }
Laura! }
Then there would have been an honest relation between all the bunch.
Nobody grudges the gents their spiritual concubines. But keeping a wife
and family--twelve children--up one’s sleeve, has always been recognised
as a dirty trick.
Which reveals how _immoral_ the absolute is! Invariably keeping some
vital fact dark! Dishonorable!
Here we come upon the third essential quality of the novel. Unlike the
essay, the poem, the drama, the book of philosophy, or the scientific
treatise: all of which may beg the question, when they don’t downright
filch it; the novel inherently is and must be: