uch the same impression
of impossibility (was there ever such a train?) that I should have felt
about a story that opened in the moon. But the shock of this was nothing to
some, different in character, that were to follow. Frankly, I confess that
Mr. MIDDLETON MURRY'S book has me baffled. Others perhaps may admire the
pains lavished by the author in analysing the emotions of a group of
characters whose temperaments certainly give him every opportunity for this
exercise. An impressionist, and impressionable, youth, whom I have
(reluctantly) to call hero, intrigues his unpleasant way through the plot;
first in Paris--where you may make a shrewd guess at his
pre-occupations--then in an English village, to which he has eloped with
the wife of a friend; in France again, and so on. The emotions to which
these amorous adventures expose him are handled by the author with a care
that suggests rather the naughtiness of the antique nineties than anything
belonging to these more vigorous days. I am far from suggesting that, as a
study in super-sensibility, the book lacks skill. There are indeed scenes
of almost painful cleverness. My complaint is that it is out of date, or (I
should perhaps better say) conspicuously out of harmony with the present
time. But if you hanker for these pictures of the past that is another
matter. I will merely issue a warning that you should preserve this book on
some shelf not too accessible by those who are still young enough to
overestimate its importance.

* * * * *

It was an odd experience to turn, as I did, directly from the new Haymarket
play, of which the late TOM GALLON was part author, to what I suppose was
the last story he ever wrote, _The Lady in the Black Mask_ (MILLS AND
BOON), which begins in a theatre with the heroine watching a play. It
begins, moreover, very well and excitingly; much better, I regret to add,
than it goes on. When the heroine arrived home from the theatre, the girl
whose companion she was, pleading fatigue, persuaded her to go out again to
a masked ball, wearing the dress and indeed assuming the personality of her
mistress. The two girls, _Ruth_, the heroine, and _Damia_, lived in a
gloomy house with old _Mr. Verinder_, who was _Damia's_ guardian. But when
_Ruth_ returned from the ball she found that this arrangement no longer
held good, _Verinder_ having been melodramatically stabbed during her
absence. And as no one knew, or would ever