e name of Ada Merling. The story
was at first to have been called "The Lady With The Lamp"; but the author
delayed it for a year and subjected it to a complete rewriting, the result
of a new and enlarged conception of the story.

Then came a steady succession of novels by Richard Dehan. I remember with
what surprise I read, in 1918, _That Which Hath Wings_, a war story of
large dimensions and an incredible amount of exact and easy detail. I
remember, too, noting that there was embedded in it a marvellous story for
children--an airplane flight in which a youngster figured--if the
publisher chose, with the author's consent, to lift this out of its
larger, adult setting. I remember very vividly reading in 1920 a
collection of short stories by Richard Dehan, published under the title
_The Eve of Pascua_. Pascua is the Spanish word for Easter. I wondered
where on earth, unless in Spain itself, the author got the bright
colouring for his story.

What I did not realise at the time was that Richard Dehan is like that.
Now, smitten to earth by the 500-page novel which he has just completed, I
think I understand better. _The Just Steward_, from one standpoint, makes
the labours of Gustave Flaubert in _Salaambo_ seem trivial. It is known
with what passionate tenacity and surprising ardour the French master
studied the subject of ancient Carthage, grubbing like the lowliest
archseologist to get at his fingertips all those recondite allusions so
necessary if he were to move with lightness, assurance and consummate art
through the scenes of his novel. But, frankly, one does not expect this of
the third daughter of an Irish soldier, an ex-journalist and the author of
a Drury Lane pantomime. Nevertheless the erudition is all here. From this
standpoint, _The Just Steward_ is truly monumental. I will show you a
sample or two:

"Beautiful, even with the trench and wall of Diocletian's comparatively
recent siege scarring the orchards and vineyards of Lake Mareotis,
splendid even though her broken canals and aqueducts had never been
repaired, and part of her western quarter still displayed heaps of
calcined ruins where had been temples, palaces and academies, Alexandria
lay shimmering under the African sun....

"The vintage of Egypt was in full swing, the figs and dates were being
harvested. Swarms of wasps and hornets, armed with formidable stings,
yellow-striped like the dreaded nomads of the south and eastern frontiers,
greedily suck