of womankind without
trying to interpose between her thought and the paper the mind and
vision of a man. The outcome is astonishing. I have said that the
construction of the novel is solid; but no man could have built it up in
that way. It moves to a definite goal by a sure path; yet its style is
variable like the ways of every woman, even if she be completely
mistress of herself.... Thus her flights of thought, like
carrier-pigeons, never fail to reach their end, although at times they
circle and hover as though troubled by some mysterious hesitancy or
temptation to turn back from their course....

Elsie Lindtner's journal shows us many examples of these circling
flights and retrogressions. Sometimes too we observe a gap, an empty
space, in which words and ideas seem to have failed. Again, there are
sudden leaps from one subject to another, the true thought appearing,
notwithstanding, beneath the artificial thought which is written down.
Sometimes there comes an abrupt and painful pause, as though somebody
walking absent-mindedly along the road found themselves brought up by a
yawning cleft....

This cinematograph of feminine thought, stubborn yet disconnected, is to
my mind the principal literary merit of the book; more so even than its
strength and brevity of style.

* * * * *

For all these reasons, it seemed to me that _The Dangerous Age_ was
worthy to be presented to the public in a French translation. The _Revue
de Paris_ also thought it worthy to be published in its pages. I shall
be astonished if French readers do not confirm this twofold judgment,
offering to this foreign novel the same favourable reception that has
already been accorded to it outside its little native land.

MARCEL PREVOST.

_The Dangerous Age_

MY DEAR LILLIE,

Obviously it would have been the right thing to give you my news in
person--apart from the fact that I should then have enjoyed the amusing
spectacle of your horror! But I could not make up my mind to this
course.

All the same, upon my word of honour, you, dear innocent soul, are the
only person to whom I have made any direct communication on the subject.
It is at once your great virtue and defect that you find everything that
everybody does quite right and reasonable--you, the wife eternally in
love with her husband; eternally watching over your children like a
brood-hen.

You are really virtuous, Lillie. But I may add that yo