Perhaps I ought to begin by saying that I have always called her “Martin”; I propose to do so still. I cannot think of her by any other name. To her own family, and to certain of her friends, she is Violet; to many others she is best known as Martin Ross. But I shall write of her as I think of her.

* * * * *

When we first met each other we were, as we then thought, well stricken in years. That is to say, she was a little over twenty, and I was four years older than she. Not absolutely the earliest morning of life; say, about half-past ten o’clock, with breakfast (and all traces of bread and butter) cleared away.

We have said to each other at intervals since then that some day we should have to write our memoirs; I even went so far as to prepare an illustration—I have it still—of our probable appearances in the year 1920. (And the forecast was not a flattering one.) Well, 1920 has not arrived yet, but it has moved into the circle of possibilities; 1917 has come, and Martin has gone, and I am left alone to write the memoirs, with such a feeling of inadequacy as does not often, I hope, beset the historian.

These vagrant memories do not pretend to regard themselves as biography, autobiography, as anything serious or valuable. Martin and I were not accustomed to take ourselves seriously, and if what I may remember has any value, it will be the value that there must be in a record, however unworthy, of so rare and sunny a spirit as hers, and also, perhaps, in the preservation of a phase of Irish life that is fast disappearing. I will not attempt any plan of the path that I propose to follow. I must trust to the caprice of memory, supplemented by the diaries that we have kept with the intermittent conscientiousness proper to such. To keep a diary, in any degree, implies a certain share of industry, of persistence, even of imagination. Let us leave it at that. The diaries will not be brought into court.