efore long _Frensham_ grew more bored than ever.
Meanwhile the adoring wife (whom the author has sketched very
sympathetically and well) had refused to divorce him; and so in the long
run--well, you can see from the start where the long-run is destined to
end. But you will probably not like a pleasant tale the less for this.
Mr. DEEPING certainly has courage. There is a scene or two in which he
takes his amazonian _Judith_ to the very edge of bathos. "She could
shoot straight with a pistol, and proved it by bringing a revolver to
the summer-house, and making _Frensham_ hang his hat on the rail-fence
that ran along the wood." Rough wooing for timid dramatists! I couldn't
resist picturing how the late Mr. PELISSIER would have handled this
situation.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Contributor to "Poet's Corner" in country paper_. "I'm
afraid I'll have to charge something for my poems now that paper has
gone up."]

* * * * *

I wonder whether EVELYN BRAXSCOMBE PETTER just decided that her novel
could not be up to date without a German spy and so forth, or whether
she really set out to do her bit for the War by commenting on the
Teutonic idea of honour. Anyhow, one must admit that her _Gretchen
Meyer_ is drawn with rather uncommon skill, even if her subterranean
mental processes are never exactly elucidated in _Miss Velanty's
Disclosure_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL). Though educated in England and
dependent, to their misfortune, on English friends for maintenance,
there always lurked in _Gretchen's_ attitude of impartial selfishness a
certain muffled hostility to the ways of this country, and particularly
to an objectionable habit she found in us of placing an exaggerated
value on straightforward dealing. This culminated in a quite gratuitous,
and indeed even insane, demand on the man who for his sins was in love
with her that he should surrender either his English ideal or her. That
he did as wisely as honestly in letting her go and be d----d to her, I
for one had no doubt, nor I think had the authoress, for, although she
could never quite forget that _Gretchen_ was her heroine, endowing her
with a kind of beauty and even baldly labelling her attractive, it is
really, on the whole, a designedly repulsive person she has presented to
us. Though an interesting study in Teuton perfidy and certainly better
written than the columns of most evening papers, I can hardly recommend