The wittiest writer in France at present is a woman.  That clever, that spirituelle grande dame, who has adopted the pseudonym of ‘Gyp,’ has in her own country no rival.  Her wit, her delicate and delightful esprit, her fascinating modernity, and her light, happy touch, give her a unique position in that literary movement which has taken for its object the reproduction of contemporary life.  Such books as Autour du Mariage, Autour du Divorce, and Le Petit Bob, are, in their way, little playful masterpieces, and the only work in England that we could compare with them is Violet Fane’s Edwin and Angelina Papers.  To the same brilliant pen which gave us these wise and witty studies of modern life we owe now a more serious, more elaborate production.  Helen Davenant is as earnestly wrought out as it is cleverly conceived.  If it has a fault, it is that it is too full of matter.  Out of the same material a more economical writer would have made two novels and half a dozen psychological studies for publication in American magazines.  Thackeray once met Bishop Wilberforce at dinner at Dean Stanley’s, and, after listening to the eloquent prelate’s extraordinary flow and fund of stories, remarked to his neighbour, ’I could not afford to spend at that rate.’  Violet Fane is certainly lavishly extravagant of incident, plot, and character.  But we must not quarrel with richness of subject-matter at a time when tenuity of purpose and meagreness of motive seem to be becoming the dominant notes of contemporary fiction.  The side-issues of the story are so complex that it is difficult, almost impossible, to describe the plot in any adequate manner.  The interest centres round a young girl, Helen Davenant by name, who contracts a private and clandestine marriage with one of those mysterious and fascinating foreign noblemen who are becoming so invaluable to writers of fiction, either in narrative or dramatic form.  Shortly after the marriage her husband is arrested for a terrible murder committed some years before in Russia, under the evil influence of occult magic and mesmerism.  The crime was done in a hypnotic state, and, as described by Violet Fane, seems much more probable than the actual hypnotic experiments recorded in scientific publications.  This is the supreme advantage that fiction possesses over fact.  It can make things artistically probable; can call for imaginative and realistic credence; can, by force of mere style, compel us to believe.  The ordinary novelists, by keeping close to the ordinary incidents of commonplace life, seem to me to abdicate half their power.  Romance, at any rate, welcomes what is wonderful; the temper of wonder is part of her own secret; she loves what is strange and curious.  But besides the marvels of occultism and hypnotism, there are many other things in Helen Davenant that are worthy of study.  Violet Fane writes an admirable style.  The opening chapter of the book, with its terrible poignant tragedy, is most powerfully