The Way of Escape. By Graham Travers (Margaret Todd, M.D.)
(Blackwood and Sons. 6s.)—If we have had our spirits unduly raised by Mr. Barry Pain, we shall be brought down to a properly gloomy level by The Way of Escape. We suppose that this name was given to the book ironically, because the unfortunate heroine Vera finds that "when lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray," there is but one way of escape,—and this way only comes at the end of the story. It is impossible, however, to help thinking that Vera is a little inconsistent. The reader might sympathise more with her treating herself as a moral leper and avoiding all social intercourse if she had not previously accepted employment as a children's governess. If people would be sorry, were all discovered, that they had asked her to dinner, how much more would they have disliked having had her to instruct their children ? However, circumstances become too much for Vera; in educating her step brothers and sisters she is obliged to emerge into the surrounding world, and finally, believing her secret to be discovered, she tells the aforesaid young people. Just as she has realised that she is after all safe, the "way of escape" is opened to her, and she loses her life to save the little children in a school at a fire. The story cannot be called exhilarating. It is an excellent as well as readable moral lesson, but all through can be heard the footsteps of a rather arbitrary Nemesis pursuing the repentant sinner.