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Title: The Divine Fire

Author: May Sinclair

Release Date: November 9, 2004 [eBook #13996]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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THE DIVINE FIRE

by

MAY SINCLAIR

Author of _Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson_, _Two Sides of a Question_,
etc. etc.

1904

Mr. OWEN SEAMAN in _Punch_ says:--

"Miss Sinclair is always quietly sure of herself. That is why she
will not be hurried, but moves through her gradual scheme with so
leisured a serenity; why her style, fluent and facile, never
forces its natural eloquence; why her humour plays with a
diffused light over all her work and seldom needs the
advertisement of scintillating epigrams. Judged by almost every
standard to which a comedy like this should be referred, I find
her book, 'The Divine Fire' the most remarkable that I have read
for many years."

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
_TWO SIDES OF A QUESTION_

CONTENTS

BOOK I
DISJECTA MEMBRA POETAE

BOOK II
LUCIA'S WAY

BOOK III
THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE

BOOK IV
THE MAN HIMSELF

BOOK I

DISJECTA MEMBRA POETAE

CHAPTER I

Horace Jewdwine had made the most remarkable of his many remarkable
discoveries. At least he thought he had. He could not be quite sure,
which was his excuse for referring it to his cousin Lucia, whose
instinct (he would not call it judgement) in these matters was
infallible--strangely infallible for so young a girl. What, he
wondered, would she say to Savage Keith Rickman?

On Saturday, when he first came down into Devonshire, he would have
been glad to know. But to-day, which was a Tuesday, he was not
interested in Rickman. To eat strawberries all morning; to lie out in
the hammock all afternoon, under the beach-tree on the lawn of Court
House; to let the peace of the old green garden sink into him; to look
at Lucia and forget, utterly forget, about