lication. 'That's
just it. I say we _ought_ to be free to do what we like. Men do what they
like.'

"'D'you think Jack has lived with other girls?'

"'My dear child, how do I know? I should hope he has.'

"'Hope! Amy, you do make me feel a prig.'

"'Perhaps you are one. Oh, I don't know. I'm sick of thinking, thinking,
thinking about it all. I never get any peace.'

"'Is there somebody you _want_ to live with?'

"'No. I wish there was. Then I should _know_'

"'I wonder if you would know,' said Patricia, in a low voice. 'Amy, do you
really know what love is? Because I don't. I've sometimes let men kiss me,
and it doesn't seem to matter in the least. I don't particularly want to
kiss them, or to be kissed. I've never seen anything in all the flirtation
that goes on in dark corners. It's amusing once or twice; but it becomes
an awful bore. The men don't interest you. The thought of living with any
of them just turns me sick.'"

=iii=

The analysis, in _The Three Lovers_, of Patricia Quin is done with that
simplicity, quiet deftness and inoffensive frankness which is the hallmark
of Mr. Swinnerton's fiction. And, coming at last to _Nocturne_, I fall
back cheerfully upon the praise accorded that novel by H. G. Wells in his
preface to it. Said Mr. Wells:

"Such a writer as Mr. Swinnerton sees life and renders it with a
steadiness and detachment and patience quite foreign to my disposition. He
has no underlying motive. He sees and tells. His aim is the attainment of
that beauty which comes with exquisite presentation. Seen through his art,
life is seen as one sees things through a crystal lens, more intensely,
more completed, and with less turbidity. There the business begins and
ends for him. He does not want you or anyone to do anything.

"Mr. Swinnerton is not alone among recent writers in this clear detached
objectivity. But Mr. Swinnerton, like Mr. James Joyce, does not repudiate
the depths for the sake of the surface. His people are not splashes of
appearance, but living minds. Jenny and Emmy in this book are realities
inside and out; they are imaginative creatures so complete that one can
think with ease of Jenny ten years hence or of Emmy as a baby. The fickle
Alf is one of the most perfect Cockneys--a type so easy to caricature and
so hard to get true--in fiction. If there exists a better writing of
vulgar lovemaking, so base, so honest, so touchingly mean and so
touchingly full of the craving for happine