devastating beings who go through life fated to bore their nearest
and dearest to the verge of lunacy. So that her marriage to poor
well-meaning _Willy Steele_ had not endured for more than a matter of
weeks before the wretched man fled from his newly-made nest, with the
heart-cry (uttered to _Parthenope's_ female relatives, themselves
too sympathetic to resent it), "I cannot stand her any longer!"
This unfortunate _débâcle_ is very ingeniously contrasted with the
courtship of another couple, immune from the curse; and the whole
story is as fresh as it is amusing. Perhaps it might have been told in
fewer words; at times the slender theme seems a trifle overladen. But
probably your true Broughtonians (who must be reckoned in thousands)
would condemn such a suggestion as heresy; and, if they be satisfied,
as they certainly will be, then all is well.

* * * * *

It is a tribute at once to the art of her treatment and the actuality
of her theme that, after reading the delicate little study of modern
romance that ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL calls _The Lovers_ (HEINEMANN),
I cannot determine whether the clever writer was reproducing or
inventing--she begins so convincingly with the statement that it was
her first chapter, itself an article in _The Century_, describing the
life of The Lovers as she watched it from her window, that brought
about her friendship with the originals, and thus her knowledge of
their further history. Anyhow, true or not, it is the kind of story
that has been going on all round us in these days of love and heroism.
Mrs. PENNELL first began to watch her pair of _amoureux_ in their
attic, which was overlooked from her higher window (most readers
could probably make a shrewd guess at its postal district) in those
seemingly so distant years when the young champions of artistic London