FICTION.
SILHOUETTE.*
Silhouette is a novel with a very feminine point of view. It gives one the impression of having been written by a woman for women ; and it shows, in embryo, that rare thing, a feminine public opinion, almost a feminine General Will. The delegates of the Working Women's Conference at Geneva have their mission much on their minds ; they discuss it in and out of School, but still more do they talk about each other, sometimes spitefully but more often with a kind of furtive affection, a conscientious resolve to do each other justice. Into this not at all monstrous regiment " enter," as the dustcover says, " Miss Lee Howard," who, as the author continually asserts, is a woman of brain, a woman of fashion, a woman of the world. Her mundane efficiency makes even the wellaffected delegates tremble and arouses hostility in the hearts of not a few. How these, the extreme section, prevail against Miss Lee Howard, on the plea that though she " works " she is not a " working woman " and is unfit to be their secretary, is the main theme of the book. Her three love affairs Miss Lee Howard herself regarded as incidental to the business of securing the coveted secretaryship.
It is difficult to see why, after an attractive opening, Silhouette fails to hold one's interest. Partly, perhaps, because the women's sentiments for each other, even when least appreciative, seem scarcely genuine. Partly, too, because Miss Lee Howard fails to become a person when she ceases to be an enigma, when the mask has been withdrawn and we are allowed to know that, when alone, she weeps and bites her reddened lips in mortification and despair. Her name, that so ingeniously suggests a firearm, perhaps also supplies the secret. A rifle that unbends is an anomaly. We prefer Miss Lee Howard in all her rigidity, and we cannot easily believe in her softer side. Perhaps the atmosphere of the Geneva Conference is too successfully evoked ; the historical element overshadows the fictional and discredits it. Miss Allen has a considerable literary quality. Silhouette is closely woven and its language abounds in metaphors that are often apposite and nearly always striking. If for no other reason than its careful though pretentious workmanship it is a book to be treated with respect. But its situations, to be effective, demand a fullness and above all a continuity of emotion that Miss Allen has not been able to provide. Lacking cohesion and buoyancy they tend to become a series of unrelated effects.
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