"A swiftly moving plot"--thus does the publicity writer characterize Miss Hartley's novel. He shows in his choice of words a restraint quite unnatural to publicity writers. We finished the volume some hours ago, but it is no exaggeration to say that it has taken us since then to arrive, after a breathless pursuit of Anne through her illogical adventures, at the point at which the authoress leaves her.

Anne is an orphan, left in the charge of two young men. One of them marries her, and the other, John Halliday, a sort of intellectual Major Dobbin, equally in love with her, must be content to worship from afar. Anne, as a bride of 17, is not willing to become prematurely a sedate matron; she starts out to live her life in her own sweet way. But finally, after she has had her share of trouble and excitement--after she has been separated from her husband and has lost her only child--come reconciliation and a humbling of her somewhat selfish will.

Gasp as we may at the childish recklessness of the girl, Miss Hartley never allows us to lose sympathy with her, Willful, selfish, materialistic, yet essentially honest and good at heart. Anne is a constant delight one of those airy creatures that make us rejoice in the eternal unreasonableness of the other sex.

Miss Hartley tells her story with a light touch as a rule, only occasionally gripping her reader with the less gentle hand of tragedy. Her sense of humor, essentially feminine, is an ever present joy.

Besides the delineation of Anne, an accomplishment of which any authoress could be proud, Miss Hartley has created in Phil, the six year old son of Anne, one of the most natural and joyful little imps that was over ponned one that may be ranked with Dickens' or Kipling's tots. And at his death Miss Hartley touches a pitch of pothoa in a few words that Dickens, in reciting the death of Paul Dombey did not equal in as many pages:

"He lay unconscious for two days, and then opened his big grey eyes and looked at Anne with a sleepy smile of recognition. Then he turned his head. Gilbert and Francesca were standing at the edge of his bed. He stared past them, at the window; his little thin white face lit up with his own cheerful grin.

"'Hello, Mummy,' he said, 'What a lark.'

"'Then he lay very still and quiet."