The Pulse of Life. By Mrs. Belloc-Lowndes. (W. Heinemann. 6s.)—Mrs.
Belloc-Lowndes has set herself a high standard in her earlier novels, and it can hardly be said that her present novel quite attains to her usual mark. A very slender thread connects the two stories on which the plot is built up, and the reader has a sense of abrupt transition when he passes from one set of interests to the other. The story with which the book opens, that of Francis Domville and the Princess in disguise with whom he falls in love, is interesting and attractive, much more so than the story of the half-Russian Paul Feyghine, his mistress, and the cousin who is so much in love with him. This cousin, by the way, is a sister of Francis Doraville, and this connexion and the friendship between Paul , and Francis are the links of the two plots. Mrs. Belloc-Lowndes
• is _ frank to the point of indiscretion in her description of the Bohemian supper-party held at Paul Feyghine's house by Joaquin°.
• the dancer, at which the unpleasant episode of Rose Hassel and the Grand Duke appears quite unnecessary, and adds nothing to the interest of the story. The best-drawn .character is that of
Paul's English mother, Madame Feyghine ; but the character- drawing is all above the average. Yet in spite of its many good points the book is not successful as an artistic whole. It is, as we have said above, disjointed, the style is often diffuse and clumsy, and the realism is not the natural effect of lifelike description, but a quality consciously striven for by the author, even at the expense of some lapses from good taste.
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