virtuosity. In this connection I should like to confess my
surprise on finding that notwithstanding all its apparatus of
analysis the story consists for the most part of physical impressions;
impressions of sound and sight, railway station, streets, a trotting
horse, reflections in mirrors and so on, rendered as if for their
own sake and combined with a sublimated description of a desirable
middle-class town-residence which somehow manages to produce a sinister
effect. For the rest any kind word about "The Return" (and there have
been such words said at different times) awakens in me the liveliest
gratitude, for I know how much the writing of that fantasy has cost me
in sheer toil, in temper, and in disillusion.

J. C.

TALES OF UNREST

KARAIN, A MEMORY

I

We knew him in those unprotected days when we were content to hold in
our hands our lives and our property. None of us, I believe, has any
property now, and I hear that many, negligently, have lost their lives;
but I am sure that the few who survive are not yet so dim-eyed as to
miss in the befogged respectability of their newspapers the intelligence
of various native risings in the Eastern Archipelago. Sunshine gleams
between the lines of those short paragraphs--sunshine and the glitter of
the sea. A strange name wakes up memories; the printed words scent the
smoky atmosphere of to-day faintly, with the subtle and penetrating
perfume as of land breezes breathing through the starlight of bygone
nights; a signal fire gleams like a jewel on the high brow of a sombre
cliff; great trees, the advanced sentries of immense forests, stand
watchful and still over sleeping stretches of open water; a line of
white surf thunders on an empty beach, the shallow water foams on the
reefs; and green islets scattered through the calm of noonday lie upon
the level of a polished sea, like a handful of emeralds on a buckler of
steel.

There are faces too--faces dark, truculent, and smiling; the frank
audacious faces of men barefooted, well armed and noiseless. They
thronged the narrow length of our schooner's decks with their ornamented
and barbarous crowd, with the variegated colours of checkered sarongs,
red turbans, white jackets, embroideries; with the gleam of scabbards,
gold rings, charms, armlets, lance blades, and jewelled handles of their
weapons. They had an independent bearing, resolute eyes, a restrained
manner; and we seem yet to hear their soft voic