Staff of Learned Clerks._)

If memory serves me, the publishers of _World's End_ (HURST AND
BLACKETT) described its theme as one of unusual delicacy, or words to
that effect. I should like to reassure them. The particular kind of
marriage of convenience which it concerns (marriage for the convenience
of the wronged heroine, by which the virtuous hero gives his name to the
child of the villain) may be, indeed is, a delicate matter, but--in
fiction at least--by no manner of means unusual. Nor can I see that its
present treatment by AMELIE RIVES (Princess TROUBETZKOY) lends it any
degree of novelty. No, let me be just; perhaps _Richard Bryce_, the
wicked betrayer, does strike a somewhat new note, at least in his
beginnings. _Richard_ was the product of art superimposed upon dollars.
He was so cultured that the humanity in him had dwindled to a negligible
quantity; and thus, when poor _Phoebe_ wanted him to "do the right thing
by her," he sent her instead some charmingly modern French verse--which
she could not understand--and finally took ship for Europe in mingled
alarm and boredom. You will have gathered that the scene is laid in
America. Perhaps this explains the hero. _Owen Randolph_ was one of the
strong and silent. He was so silent that, though he knew perfectly well
all that had happened, he married _Phoebe_, and allowed that unhappy
lady to suffer chapters of agonized apprehension as to his attitude,
when half-a-dozen words would have set her at ease on the subject. He
was, moreover, so strong that, when eventually the theme of their
relations with _Phoebe_ did crop up between himself and _Richard_, the
latter spent some months in hospital as a consequence. However, he
recovered, and things were thus able to reach the kind of ending which
was expected of them. There are parts of _World's End_ that are worthy
of a better whole, but that is the best I can say for it.

* * * * *

I believe that _Paul Moorhouse_ (LONG) was never really predestined to
end unhappily and that his suicide was a conclusion as little
premeditated by the author as it was apparently by the hero. If such
ends must be, they should be a climax demanded by relentless logic: some
sort of culminating event should occur which, added to what has gone
before, leaves no alternative. _Paul_, however, had survived for years
under the stress of all the circumstances which finally constrained him
to make an end of himself