The complex figure of Vendred, the hero of the story, the evasive provocative Mona Lisa-like portrait of Mrs. Dover, the extraordinary and stimulating art with which her husband is described, the agitating and tragic appeal made to us by Vendred’s child-wife, the unfortunate Louise—­all these together make up one of the most absorbing and unforgettable impressions we have received for many years.

Of Mr. and Mrs. Dover in their relation to one another the following passage reverberates through one’s mind:—­“They would sit opposite one another silently, criticising with a drastic pitiless criticism.  This in itself showed where they had arrived; for faith has to be shaken before there is room for criticism, and if love survives the criticism of lovers, it is altogether different from the love they began with.  Lovers can be almost anything they choose to each other and still be in love, but they cannot be critical.  That is blighting.”

Perhaps the most tragic thing in the book is the letter written by Louise to Vendred when the luckless child discovers her husband’s intrigue with her mother:—­“I came to you in the middle of the night last night because I was afraid of the wind.  The fire was burning and I saw.  I am gone, you will never see me again.”

The last scenes of the unfortunate girl’s life—­indirectly described by the ruffian who got possession of her in Paris—­produce on the mind that sickening sense of the wanton stupidity of the Universe which fills one with hopeless pity.

The author of this book must have a noble and formidable soul.

98.  OLIVER ONIONS.  THE STORY OF LOUIE.

“The Story of Louie” is the last and finest volume of an astonishing trilogy—­the first two volumes of which are named respectively “In Accordance with the Evidence” and “The Debit Account.”

The mere fact that in the midst of our contemptible hatred of “long books” this excellent trilogy should have appeared, is an indication of the daring and originality of Mr. Oliver Onions.

Mr. Onions is one of the few modern writers—­along with Hardy, Conrad and James—­who is entirely untouched by political or ethical propagandism.  His trilogy is a genuinely creative work of a high and exclusive order.  The manner in which, to quote Mr. L.U.  Wilkinson again—­“the whole prospect is, as it were, strained through the character of one or other of the leading persons is in itself a proof of this writer’s fine artistic instinct.”  The way in which all the leading persons in the book stand out in clear relief and indelibly print themselves on the mind is evidence of the value of this method.  And what masterly irony in the contrast between “Evie” for instance as Jeffries sees her and “Evie” as she is seen by her rival Louie!

Nowhere in literature, except in Dostoievsky, has the ferocious struggle of two women over a man been so savagely and truly portrayed as in the great scene in “Louie” between that young woman and Evie when the latter visits her in her rooms.