sufficiently conveyed by the title. Separation, of husband from wife or
parent from child, is of course the spectre that haunts the Anglo-Indian
home. It was, chiefly at least, for the health of their child _Winnie_ that
_Guy Bassett_ was forced to let her and his wife abide permanently in
Kensington while he himself continued his Eastern career as a
grass-widower. Very naturally, the result was all sorts of trouble. This
first took the form of a flirtation, only half serious, with an artful
young woman of the type with which Mr. KIPLING has made us familiar.
Unfortunately poor _Bassett_ escapes from this emotional frying-pan only to
plunge into the fire of a much more scorching attachment. But I will not
spoil for you an ingenious plot. For one thing at least the book is worth
reading, and that is the picture, admirably drawn, of the half-caste
_Orchard_ family, whose ways and speech and general outlook you will find
an abiding joy. Mrs. PERRIN has nothing better in her whole gallery, which
is saying much.

* * * * *

You probably know Mr. BLACKWOOD'S elusive method of mystery-mongering by
now. None of his characters can ever _quite_ make out whether the latest
noise is a mewing cat, the wind in the trees or the Great God Pan flirting
with the Hamadryads. He meets in Egypt a Russian, consumptive with a hooked
nose and a rotten bad temper, and persists in seeing him as a hawk-man
dedicated to the wingéd god, Horus. "No one could say exactly what
happened." (They never can.) But it was something very solemn and
important, and in the end the Russian, in a fancy dress of feathers, was
found dead at the foot of the cliff, whither he had flown (or was it
danced?--well, no one quite knew). He all but carried with him little
golden-haired _Vera_, who was all but a dove. This is a quite
characteristic sample out of _Day and Night Stories_ (CASSELL). And the