For in the space between the ship-board engagement and the wedding a railway accident changes poor Agnes from a still beautiful and active woman to a nerve-ridden invalid.  But in spite of this she and Brangwyn marry; and (with the much too attractive Antonina always in evidence) you can guess the result.  One odd point; you will hardly get any distance into Miss E.S.  STEVENS’ exceedingly well-written story without being struck by its resemblance to one of Mr. HICHENS’ romances.  The relative positions of the members of the triangle, middle-aged wife, young husband, and girl are exactly those of The Call of the Blood; while the Sicilian setting is identical.  But this of course is by no means to accuse Miss STEVENS of plagiarism; her development of the situation, and especially the tragedy that resolves it, is both original and convincing.  The end indeed took me wholly unawares, since as a hardened novel-reader I had naturally been expecting—­but read it, and see if you also are not startled by a refreshing departure from the conventional.

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If there still linger in the remoter parts of Cromarty or the Balls Pond Road certain unsophisticated persons who believe that the stage is one long glad symposium of wine, woman and song they will be interested to know that Mr. KEBLE HOWARD has written his latest novel, The Gay Life (JOHN LANE), with the express object—­or so he says—­of disillusioning them.  He has no use for the cynic who declared that there are three sexes, men, women and actors.  His Thespians are gay because they are happy, and happy because (though poor) they are virtuous.  The crowning ambition of their lives of honest toil is not unlimited silk-stockings and champagne suppers, but the combined and unqualified approval of Mr. GRANVILLE BARKER and Miss HORNIMAN.  I fear the Philistines will not be much impressed with Mr. KEBLE HOWARD’S championship.  In the first place he selects for his heroine a girl of what used to be known as the “lower orders.”  Yet it is more than doubtful if the lower orders have ever done anything for Mr. KEBLE HOWARD except open his cab-doors and bring his washing home on Saturday night.  Otherwise he would not make his East End of London heroine talk an argot of which fifty per cent, is pure East Side Noo York.  True, “the curtain” finds her in New York in the arms of a faithful and acrobatic American, so perhaps it doesn’t matter much.  Meanwhile she has become the idol of the Manchester School, enjoyed an unsuccessful season in partnership with the late Sir HERBERT BEERBOHM TREE, and signed a contract with the SCHUBERTS to tour the States, and all without any apparent diminution of the guileless flow of “Whitechapel” with which she won the hearts of her first employers.  It is courageous of Mr. HOWARD to place on record his apparent belief that a total absence of the three “R’s” and any number of “h’s” cannot debar a strong-minded daughter of the slums from the higher rungs of the histrionic ladder.