["The Spanish Gardener"] is a compact and neat parable whose simple moral is well worth restatement for our times. The sermon, so to speak, in "The Spanish Gardener" is one already familiar to Dr. Cronin's readers: namely, that simple, direct affections and honest acts can be corroded and destroyed by distrust and by too much introspection. Or, put more aphoristically and a little less exactly, to the impure in heart all things are impure.

Dr. Cronin begins his story with a firm discipline, in a tone as dry and detached as Somerset Maugham's. Throughout, "The Spanish Gardener" is in fact as attentively carpentered as any novel by Maugham himself. But the detached mood soon disappears: Dr. Cronin has targets to scourge and no intention of remaining above the strife. His story is as predictable as the resolution of a given algebraic equation. (p. 20)

All [the] characters are developed...