forgotten hat and the Marden household was again revolutionised.

_Beauty for Ashes_, by Joan Sutherland, is a story with a more serious
theme. It really raises the question whether a man who has wrongly been
named as co-respondent is in honour bound to marry the defendant. The
affair of Lady Madge with Lord Desmond was an entirely innocent one,
despite what London said. Lady Madge's husband, wrought upon by shame and
anger, began his action for divorce; and Desmond found himself not merely
face to face with dishonour but bound by conventional honour for life to a
girl with whom he had simply been friendly.

William Rose Benet had been known chiefly as a poet until the publication
of his first novel, _The First Person Singular_. The scene of _The First
Person Singular_ shifts between the kinetic panorama of modern New York
and the somewhat stultifying quietude of a small Pennsylvania town. A
mysterious Mrs. Ventress is the centre of its rapidly unfolding series of
peculiar situations. Mrs. Ventress is a puzzle to the townspeople. They
believe odd things about her. The particular family in Tupton with which
she comes in contact is an eccentric one. The father is a recluse--for
reasons. His adopted daughter, Bessie Gedney, is an odd character among
young girls in fiction. Dr. Gedney's real daughter had disappeared years
before. Why? What has become of her? This complicates the mystery.

_The First Person Singular_ is a light novel, avowedly without the heavy
"significance" and desperately drab realism of many modern novels. And yet
it flashes with tragedy and implicates grim spiritual struggle without
tearing any passion to tatters. The author's touch is light, the variety
of his characters furnish him much diversion. The amusing side of each
situation does not escape him. His style has a certain effervescent
quality, but, for all that, the tragic developments of the story are not
shirked.

Another treatment of a problem of marriage, a treatment sympathetic but
robust, is found in the new novel of F. E. Mills Young, _The Stronger
Influence_. Like Miss Mills Young's earlier novels, _Imprudence_ and _The
Almonds of Life_, the scene of _The Stronger Influence_ is British Africa.
The story is of the choice confronting a girl upon whom two men have a
vital claim.

To be somebody is more ethical than to serve somebody. The individual has
not only a right but an obligation to sacrifice family entanglements in
the cause of a