aw that she
loved me.

She had realised on my first return that I was her husband, but had
determined to find out if I loved her. As I said nothing, so she too had
remained silent.

"Gilbert," she said, "I have wept, but now I smile. The past is passed.
Let the love I bore my brother be buried in the greater love I give my
husband. Let us turn our backs on the dark shadows and begin our lives."

Have I more to tell--one thing only. We went to Paris for our real
honeymoon. The great war was over, and the Commune had just ended. In
the company of a friend I saw some Communists led out to be shot, and
among their faces I recognised Macari.

* * * * *

FENIMORE COOPER

The Last of the Mohicans

James Fenimore Cooper, born in New Jersey on September 15,
1789, was a hot-headed controversialist of Quaker descent,
who, after a restless youth, partly spent at sea, became the
earliest conspicuous American novelist. Apart from fiction,
Cooper's principal subject was American naval history. Though
he made many enemies and lived in turmoil, the novelist had a
strain of nobility in his character that is reflected
throughout his formal but manly narratives. Love interest
rarely rises in his stories beyond a mechanical
sentimentality; it is the descriptions of adventure that
attract. Nowhere are Fenimore Cooper's vivid powers of
description more apparent than in "The Last of the Mohicans,"
the second in order of the Leatherstocking tales. In the first
of the series, "The Pioneers," the Leatherstocking is
represented as already past the prime of life, and is
gradually being driven out of his beloved forests by the axe
and the smoke of the white settler. "The Last of the Mohicans"
takes the reader back before this period, to a time when the
red man was in his vigour, and was a power to be reckoned with
in the east of America. The third of the famous tales is "The
Prairie," in which Cooper's picturesque hero is laid in his
grave. Despite this, the author resuscitates him in the two
remaining volumes--"The Pathfinder" and "The Deerslayer." Of
these five novels, and, as a matter of fact, of all Cooper's
works, "The Last of the Mohicans" is regarded as the
masterpiece. In it are to be found all the author's virtues,
and few of his faults. It is certainly the