' THE BEGUILING SHORE. By D. F. Gardiner. (Con- stable.
7s. 6d.)—This is a study in the lives Of three cool. blooded people : Charles, a young man who becomes with suspicious ease a great portrait painter ; Anne, his one time Mistress, who becomes even more suspiciously a great over- night success on the stage ; and Philip, who eventually becoMes her husband when she chooses to settle down among the
minor grandeurs of conventional county Anne a tepid creature who saves foxes from hounds and generally upsets-county tradition. At_the.same time she keeps, harles hanging round. Withinit having the spirit to' decide between him and her husband. Chirles marries a Frenbh girl and Anne is left. to the conventional formula for settling down she will condescend to have a child by her own husband: The story is well written; the characters are real; but the whole drags badly. Every embryonic emotional crisis miscarries and nothing fructifies in these low temperatures of the spirit.
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