Chapter XVII: Epilogue: And what became of them all?

He who does not tell, on the plea that he is “competing with Life,” which never knits up a plot, but leaves all the threads loose, acts unfairly.

Mrs. St. John Deloraine is now Mrs. Maitland, and the happy couple are visiting the great Colonies, seeking a site for a new settlement of the unemployed, who should lead happy lives under the peaceful sway of happy Mrs. Maitland.

Barton and Mrs. Barton have practised the endowment of research, in the case of Winter, who has quite recovered from his injuries, and still hopes to fly. But he has never trusted himself again on his machine, which, moreover, has never flown again. Winter, like the alchemist who once made a diamond by chance, in Balzac’s novel, has never recovered the creative moment. But he makes very interesting models, in which Mrs. Barton’s little boy begins to take a lively interest.

Eliza Gullick, declining all offers of advancement unconnected with the British drama, clings to the profession for which, as Mrs. Gullick maintains, she has a hereditary genius.

“We hear,” says the _Athenæum_, “that the long promised edition of ‘Demetrius of Scepsis,’ by Mr. Bielby, of St. Gatien’s, is in the hands of the delegates of the Clarendon Press.”

But Fiction herself is revolted by the improbability of the statement that an Oxford Don has finished his _magnum opus!_

EXPLICIT.