if Winter Comes. By A. S. M. Hutchinson. (Hodder and
Stoughton. (7s. 6d. net.)The problem which -here confronts the reader is a very old one. It is the problem of •social. conven- tions, of how to reconcile their utter indispensability with their often :hideous cruelty. Mark Sabre, by profession an educational publisher and by nature a sensitive idealist, -is unfortunate in his marriage, and the first part of the -book is devoted 'to an exposition of the situation in regard- to himself and Mabel, his wife. The second parepietnres the relations which exist between him and Nona, to .whom he had formerbr proposed and who had aud:Part lit tells the story cd.Effie, an unfortunate girl whom Sabre befriended at the expense of convention and by so doing precipitated the terrible train of disaster by which he is in the end overwhelmed. But -though these are -the author's arbitrary_diviaions, they constitute no possible basis for analysis. The unending _struggle in Mark Sabre's own mind to reconcile his high, if vague, ideals and wide, understanding sympathies with the harsh practices and unimaginative stupidities of his social world is -so prevalent and so prominent that it obscures other interests. Mabel is frankly impossible, Effie is An object of tragic pity, Nona is charming, heroic, incomprehensible and pathetic at once, but these figures appear as a background. They are present to elucidate the tangled skein of apparently irreconcilable truths which presa upon Mark Sabre's consciousness. The battlefield is that old debatable ground where the social code comes into conflict with the Christian covenant, but the battle is refought in the book before us with a vividness and sincerity -which are decidedly impressive.
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