tecture that she saw everywhere recalled Laurence so keenly that his presence seemed almost visible.

The afternoon sunshine was mellow in the Grande Place. It glowed among the daffodils and tulips of the flower sellers. Christina caught her breath with pleasure. "Oh, if Laurence could see this," she cried; "look at these old houses and the Hotel de Ville, isn't it? How Laurence would have loved it and understood it. If he were nere I wouldn't speak to him. I'd just let him look and look. And to think that other mothers' sons built these lovely houses, and Laurence . . . "Laurence's work isn't done yet," Mr. Ingleby answered.

The words lingered in Christina's mind even till they reached the little old church of St. Nicholas.

"What is the history of this church?" she asked.

"I can't remember it," he answered, "and I've not brought Baedeker, but there's a figure of Our Lord that is venerated by the people. It is an ugly figure but very pitiful. The foot has been kissed so much that it is nearly worn away."

They entered the church together. Mr. Ingleby walked up the center aisle, genuflected before the high altar and knelt down. He seemed to have no desire to look about or to point out objects of interest. He had come as worshiper not as tourist. For a while Christina wandered about looking at this and that. But there was little to see, and she too knelt down.

She was close to the west door, and her eyes were drawn to the wooden figure of which Mr. Ingleby had spoken. At first it repelled her; it was so ugly, so crudely realistic, this scourged and weary Christ with the old shabby red velvet mantle round His shoulders. Mocked and rejected, He stood there bearing the sins and

kiss was with some a token of compassion. With others it was the sign of companionship. They had come with broken hearts and found another broken-hearted. They had come in their rags and found a king in a shabby mantle thrown round Him in mockery. All who had come had seen in Him some reflection of themselves. They had understood the saying, "Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our afflictions." There was an appealing homeliness and intimacy in the suggestion of this wooden image. It had been more significant of man's need and God's response than all the soaring beauty of St. Gudule.

Christina knelt with her eyes fixed on this weary and over-burdened Christ. And the image carried her thoughts to the original. Kneeling here in this city church, where the worshipers were poor and shabby, it seemed easy to picture in imagination the Man who bore a cross to Calvary and paused on His way to speak to the women of Jerusalem, the only Man in all earth's history who had an answer for the sorrows of life. Moments of religious realization are rare with some people. They had been rare with Christina. The sudden consciousness of God that is called conversion had not come to her. She had known the convention of religion rather than its reality.

Now it seemed to her that she too, like those mothers of Jerusalem, saw the Man of Sorrows passing by on the way of the Cross. And for her too He paused. And in that moment Christina

knew that her son's need was the thing she would urge. She would touch Christ's garment as another woman had done, and He would understand. Then she knew that He had paused and had looked into her soul and had seen her as God sees. And she knew that to love God must always be to enter into the mind of God and to share the infinite pity of God. She could not pray and still hate. She could not seek forgiveness for Laurence and deny it to his wife.

There was not now the consciousness of effort and struggle. Love and pity conquered the impregnable fortress of resentment, and she knew that she had forgiven.

Those who came into the church at this time saw an elderly lady, who was obviously English, but yet unlike a tourist because she prayed with fervor, unheeding of anything around her. Tears ran down her cheeks under her veil. But this was not strange to the women who passed, for many came to St. Nicholas to weep. The passers-by cast kindly glances at her, and knew that she was of that vast confraternity of the sorrowful whose patron is both God and Man.

Spiritual experience was strange to Christina. She was hardly aware of the wonder of the change that had befallen her. Perhaps she would have said that everything seemed suddenly different, as on some soft morning of West wind one wakes to find that the blank bitterness of the East

wind has passed. Christina had no plan except that she would go to Lucilla in real pity and tenderness, not as the stern servant of duty which she had been hitherto. Her will accorded with the universal harmony, and she had found peace. Being a simple creature, she steadfastly believed that Christ had really come to her in this dusty city church. She felt that she could gladly kneel at His feet

forever, drawing into the circle of her happiness and love those she lovedyes, Lucilla too and Lucilla's child. There was room for them all.

At last she became vaguely aware that Mr. Ingleby had come down the aisle, and that he stood beside her. She rose and followed him from the church, aware now that her cheeks were wet with tears. But Mr. Ingleby did not look at her as she dried her eyes, though he was well aware of the tears. "I want to go back quickly to Lucilla," Christina said to him; "I have been away too long."

"Not really long," he answered, "only an hour and a half. But we can get a tram. Come along."

He took her arm and steered her across the street. There had been a shower while they were in the church, and now the sun sparkled on wet surface and window-panes.

"It is the clear shining after rain," said Mr. Ingleby, "and there is a rainbow; how beautiful!"

Christina looked up anxiously at the window as she rang the bell and waited for the door to be opened. She was full of apprehension for the child whose life hung in the balance.

It was Madame Mercier who let her in. Christina could hardly wait to answer the polite inquiries for her welfare in the rain. No, she was not wet, she had escaped the shower; she thanked the little Belgian and went swiftly up the stairs. Her heart sank with fear as she opened the door of the sick room and went in. All was so still that she feared the child must be dead. The blind was drawn and the room was shadowy. Lucilla sat motionless by the bedside, her arm across the quiet little figure. She did not move as Christina came in.

The elder woman crossed the room softly and stood beside her.

"How has she been?" was her whispered question.

"The fever seems less, but I think she must be dying, she is so quiet. I wanted to give her something to revive her, but Madame told me to

wait for you."

Christina felt the little limp hand, the baby cheek, now so wasted. She spoke with a sob in her voice.

"I believe she is better, Lucilla; oh! thank God."

Lucilla raised her somber eyes to look at her mother-in-law

"Do you mean that?" she asked. Christina had made no plan of words or action as she came back, but it was plain to her now what she must do.

She stooped and kissed Lucilla's forehead.

"Ah! poor child," she said, "God bless you. May He forgive you everything freely as I do."

luggage. He had gone up to London to meet them, for he had left Christina in Brussels till Marie was strong enough to travel.

Christina was full of the small fussiness of unaccustomed travelers.

"Have you everything?" she asked; "there were eight things in all, my handbag-where is that? Ah! I have it. Give Marie to me, nurse, and you help Mr. Ingleby. Oh! here's a porter three trunks in the van, one a black, another brown one has initials. . . C. T."

...

There was an interval of fevered excitement, then they were all in the cab with the manifold small luggage, and there was time for reflection as the horse ambled quietly through the sunny streets of the old market town.

So she was home again. It seemed to Christina that her absence must be measured by years rather than by weeks. She was almost surprised that the town looked exactly as usual, that she saw familiar faces and familiar shops. No changes were visible. A passing friend saw her and bowed with no look of surprise, hardly aware, perhaps, that she had been away.

Yet since she left Westhampton the course of life had changed for Christina. She had entered a new phase, both mentally and in circumstance. Her old vocation was renewed with the third generation. Once more she had a child to be her care and occupation. She sighed. Yet her sigh was only half anxious. In her heart she was satisfied by this new care.

Her thoughts went back to the events that had happened so swiftly in the little house in Brussels. Marie had taken a turn for the better on that very afternoon on which Christina had gone to St. Nicholas. After that the child's recovery had been slow but steady. She would always be delicate, but with care, the care she would have now, all might be well.

But long before Marie was well her mother had developed measles in a peculiarly bad form. This memory seemed to Christina now like a dream. She and a nun had undertaken the nursing. They had striven for Lucilla's life, and at one time she had seemed better. Then the sudden change for the worse came and death had followed quickly.

With Lucilla there had been no pathetic last scene, no edifying deathbed repentance. She met the end passively, inertly, as an animal does. But Christina in her newly-awakened tenderness had understood. As long as the girl was conscious she asked constantly after the child.

"I am very ill," she said one night; "if I die baby will have no one. Her father will not want her-and that other woman would hate her because she is mine. I am all she has just we two against the world . . . your Laurence would have taken care of her."

Then Christina, taking the dying woman's hand, said to her, "I will

We pause on the outset of this appreciation of Mr. Hugh Walpole to consider the curiously abnormal position of the Georgian novelist. We have in the twentieth century a school, or rather a shoal, of people professionally engaged on the writing of novels, reducing life to a system of romance or realism; or something remotely related to either; most of them very young men still in the thirties, who have in their short, productive careers written some of them as many as ten volumes of ponderable size, bristling with all sorts of new and surprising theories on the simple and complex

problems of existence. Among them are several novelists of rare promise and actual achievement, notably Compton Mackenzie, Gilbert Cannan, John Palmer, J. D. Beresford, and finally Hugh Walpole; quite a Pléiade of young authors who have written, as in the case of Mr. Walpole, almost as much in solid word for word bulk as many of the great novelists whose works reflect a philosophy of experience, slowly and painfully acquired through a long life of triumph and disillusion, stopping only at the grave. How different things are in our topsy-turvy times! We no longer witness the sad

spectacle of genius toiling along on a crust of bread and a pot of four ale in pursuit of the world's recognition, witnessing instead the refreshing reality of young men bounding into fame or notoriety soon after they have toddled out of the cradle into the nursery; or rather soon after they have leaped out of the nursery into the playground; for it is still on the playgrounds of Eton and Winchester and no less the common playgroundof the street and slum that Europe will be won in the arts as well as in the wars. We offer no comment on this curious thing; or why young men should bound into celebrity almost before they have completed their education. It is a conundrum worthy of an Edipus.

It is generally acknowledged that the great masters, Scott, Dickens, Fielding, Thackeray, Balzac, Hugo and Tolstoy were careless, slovenly fellows; often prosily prolix; fussily psychological; continually bothered as to how to begin and where to end their stories; but when we did venture into the heart of them how completely were we under their spell and at their mercy! The modern novelist is much more strategic. The most cursory examination of the work of any of this amazing group reveals the not very original fact that in the sheer craft of their trade; their scrupulous attention to subordinate detail; chaste, clipped phraseology; the poise and balance of their characterization; uncanny sense of atmosphere; they not only rival but actually surpass acknowledged masters like Dickens, Scott, Balzac, and even Thackeray. They are all of them conspicuous literary artists; but in spite of all their sounding triumphs and terrible industry they have neither a keen understanding nor offer a deep reading of human life; and that is one reason why perhaps we shall always prefer a novel

of Scott or Balzac to a novel of Compton Mackenzie or Hugh Walpole. We get the impression, rightly or wrongly, as if these young novelists were not so much trying to imitate the masters as trying to show them how much better they themselves would have written their masterpieces for them in the new, ultra-modern fashion. We find this in some degree in Mr. Hugh Walpole, whose "Fortitude" is a reminiscence of "David Copperfield" and "Richard Feverel"; written in a minor key; faintly, deftly echoed; more chaste and scrupulous than Dickens; more humbly restrained than Meredith; but necessarily a devitalized Dickens; a lack-luster Meredith, stripped of trope and dithyramb; a skeleton in filigree, without the warm blood, the firm bone, the vital movement.

We cannot promise you many facts about Mr. Hugh Walpole. Like most men of his outlook and tradition he preserves a seemly silence about his life; but if you will have facts, we can tell you that Mr. Walpole was born in 1884 somewhere in New Zealand; looks just as young as his age; has a noble, even commanding presence; appreciably frank and open; one of the few really refreshing things we had met in Russia before, of course, the Revolution; a bit of sun on the terra-cotta landscape. Mr. Walpole was first a tutor; then a journalist, spending four previous years of his life on the thankless task of reviewing other people's novels; that is all we know and all we need to know about the facts of Mr. Walpole's life.

We have read only three of Mr. Walpole's miscellaneous novels, "Fortitude," "The Dark Forest" and “Maradick at Forty," these being the only books of his available to us in Russia, so our estimate is necessarily suggestive rather than comprehensive. We do not know Mr. Wal