ach the other's true temperament provide the "plot" of
_The Inscrutable Lovers_. Though slender it is original and might lend
itself either to farce or tragedy. Mr. MACFARLAN'S attitude is pleasantly
analytical. It is indeed his delightful air of remote criticism, his
restrained and epigrammatic style queerly suggestive of ROMAIN ROLAND in
_The Market Place_, and his extremely clever portraiture, rather than any
breadth or depth appertaining to the story itself, that entitle the author
to a high place among the young novelists of to-day. Mr. MACFARLAN--is he
by any chance the Rev. ALEXANDER MACFARLAN?--may and doubtless will produce
more formidable works of fiction in due course; he will scarcely write
anything smoother, more sparing of the superfluous word or that offers a
more perfect blend of sympathy and analysis.

* * * * *

_Susie_ (DUCKWORTH) is the story of a minx or an exposition of the eternal
feminine according to the reader's own convictions. I am not sure--and I
suppose that places me among those who regard her heroine as the mere
minx--that the Hon. Mrs. DOWDALL has done well in expending so much
cleverness in telling _Susie's_ story. Certainly those who think of
marriage as a high calling, for which the vocation is love, will be as much
annoyed with her as was her cousin _Lucy_, the idealist, at once the most
amusing and most pathetic figure in the book. I am quite sure that Susies
and Lucys both abound, and that Mrs. DOWDALL knows all about them; but I am
not equally sure that the Susies deserve the encouragement of such a
brilliant dissection. Yet the men whose happiness she played with believed
in _Susie's_ representation of herself as quite well-meaning, and other
women who saw through her liked her in spite of their annoyance; and--after
all the other things I have said--I am bound, in sincerity, to admit that I
liked her too.

* * * * *

You could scarcely have given a novelist a harder case than to prove the
likeableness of _Cherry Mart_, as her actions show her in _September_
(METHUEN), and I wonder how a Victorian writer would have dealt with the
terrible chit. But FRANK SWINNERTON, of course, is able to hold these
astonishing briefs with ease. Here is a girl who first turns the head of
_Marian Forster's_ middle-aged husband in a pure fit of experimentalism,
and then sets her cap with defiant malice at the young man who seems likely