other. He defines himself as "a genius without a portfolio," just as
there are certain ministers-of-state without portfolios.

In such a character many of us will find just enough of ourselves to
make its weaknesses distasteful to us. We resent, just because
we recognize the truth of the picture. Leon Ploszowski belongs
unmistakably to our own times. His doubts and his dilettanteism are
our own. His fine aesthetic sense, his pessimism, his self-probings,
his weariness, his overstrung nerves, his whole philosophy of
negation,--these are qualities belonging to this century, the outcome
of our own age and culture.

If this were all the book offers us one might well wonder why it
was written. But its real interest centres in the moment when the
cultivated pessimist "without dogma" discovers that the strongest and
most genuine emotion of his life is its love for another man's wife.
It is an old theme; certainly two thirds of our modern French novels
deal with it; we know exactly how the conventional, respectable
British novel would handle it. But here is a treatment, bold,
original, and unconventional. The character of the woman stands out in
splendid contrast to the man's. Its simplicity, strength, truth, and
faith are the antidote for his doubt and weakness. Her very weakness
becomes her strength. Her dogmatism saves him.

The background of the book, its lesser incidents, are thoroughly
artistic, its ending masterly in its brevity and pathos; here again is
the distinguishing mark of genius, the power of condensation. The man
who has philosophized and speculated now writes the tragedy of
his life in four words: "Aniela died this morning." This is the
culmination towards which his whole life has been moving; the rest is