7s. 6d. net).
In these days of new ideals in fiction we are apt, perhaps, to forget that a story of the older kind, with plenty of good incident and a strong plot firmly put together, may be telld about very interesting people. In any novel by Mr. A. E. W. Mason one in confident of finding a good story well told; but justice has not always been done to his drawing of character, because it is apparently unambitious. His new novel tells of the French in Morocco before and during the war; and if the massacre in Fez is brilliantly done, the scene in the sacred city of Mulai Idris, where two French officers come face to face—the one in command of troops, the other, his former friend, a deserter living as -a native among the natives—ir perhaps the queerest and most dramatic in all Mr. Mason's long list of original and well-planned crises, But Mr. Mason's stories can always be left to take care of themselves. The danger here is that, absorbed in the tale, we might miss the quality of two of the characters in particular: the woman for whom Paul Ravel turned deserter, and Paul Ravel's friend, Gerard de Montignac, to whom chance brought the discovery of their hiding-place and the problem of what to do with the discovered pair. The woman, an English woman, is a little masterpiece of strange but recognisable womanhood, whose very limitations stamp her as genuine. And Gerard de Montignac is a type of Frenchman of whose existence perhaps only those who know France well are aware—until he appears suddenly as a great soldier or al great administrator. The hero, Paul Ravel, serves his turn: lid is an interesting, doomed figure, with just strength, or luck, enough to conquer his doom. And yet it might be said that the best piece of character-drawing in the whole book is that of Morocco, herself—the Morocco that has gone for ever where the French have set foot. And a good thing, too! says civilization, whatever romance and mystery may plead.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.