tre, the Reform Club, on the committee of which he had sat,
despite his youthful years, since 1915. The political interest, indeed, is
revealed in the subtitle, _Between Two Worlds_, which was originally
intended for the actual title.

McKenna's next book, _Ninety-Six Hours' Leave_, appealed to the reader's
gayer moods and _Midas and Son_, with its tragic history of an
Anglo-American multimillionaire, to the reader in serious temper.

In spite of certain blemishes due to Mr. McKenna's unfamiliarity with
American life, I should say that _Midas and Son_ is probably his ablest
work so far. I think it surpasses even _Sonia_. Mr. McKenna returned to
Sonia in his novel, _Sonia Married_. His work after that was a trilogy
called _The Sensationalists_, three brilliant studies of modern London in
the form of successive novels called _Lady Lilith_, _The Education of Eric
Lane_ and _The Secret Victory_.

=iv=

Writing from 11, Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, London, in 1920, Mr.
McKenna had this to say about his trilogy:

"_Lady Lilith_ is the first volume of a trilogy called _The
Sensationalists_, three books giving the history for a few years before
the war, during and immediately after the war, of a group of
sensation-mongers, emotion-hunters or whatever you like to call them,
whose principle and practice it was to startle the world by the
extravagance of their behaviour, speech, dress and thought and, in the
other sense of the word, sensationalism, to live on the excitement of new
experiences. Such people have always existed and always will exist,
receiving perhaps undue attention from the world that they set out to
astonish. You, I am sure, have them in America, as we have them here, and
in the luxurious and idle years before the war they had incomparable scope
for their search for novelty and their quest for emotion. Some of the
characters in _Lady Lilith_ have already been seen hovering in the
background of _Sonia_, _Midas and Son_ and _Sonia Married_, though the
principal characters in _Lady Lilith_ have not before been painted at full
length or in great detail; and these principal characters will be found in
all three books of the trilogy.

"_Lady Lilith_, of course, takes its title from the Talmud, according to
which Lilith was Adam's first wife; and as mankind did not taste of the
Tree of Knowledge or of death until Eve came to trouble the Garden of
Eden, Lilith belongs to a time in which there was neither death no