Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/715

A case could, no doubt, be made; the mystery might be solved. But there is an indelicacy in the process. Mr. Mackenzie must follow his inclination, and it would be as well to utter him no reproaches. But there are two who cannot reproach him and whom he has served badly. In the cause of all that is decent in the art of the novel they may be called up and placed before Mr. Mackenzie. One is his own creation, the girl in Carnival, whose ineffable gaiety and impudence and loveliness were so soon made a mockery in a cheap series of adventures; the other is the great master of the English novel who, a year or two before he died, chose Mr. Mackenzie for his rare and special praise.

It would be easier to think lightly of Mr. Mackenzie's failure if one did not have to remember what Henry James said of him. Remembering that, and remembering Jenny Pearl, the brief story of Mr. Mackenzie's career takes on some of the proportions of tragedy.