The Things that Matter. By Francis Gribble. (A.. D. Lines
and Co.)—This is an Ibaenitish tragedy of New Womanliness that ought to be very welcome to Mrs. Lynn Linton, and it contains much cleverness of a kind that is, however, rather too fashionable at the present moment. An artist and a novelist of the " emancipated" order have been married for some time, and have been supposed to be quite happy in that unreal way which is " quite common in London society," and then suddenly the novelist Eleanor puts to Walter, the artist, the awkward question, " It's an odd thing, isn't it, that you and I have never fallen in love with each other ? " This leads to discussions, and—although these are conducted in a quite good-tempered way—to complications of a serious character. Eleanor discovers that Walter has a mistress, an actress of the name of Dora Ffrench, plots to meet her, and discovers that she is a " doll- woman." She tries to attract her husband back to her by some- thing very like " doll-woman" devices, but, in the belief that she has failed, and that therefore there is nothing left for her but to die, she takes poison. Her easy-going husband, on his side, makes up his mind to separate from his mistress and cleave to his wife. He does so, and returns to his home to find Eleanor dead. Mr. Gribblo writes more than passably well, and Eleanor, as a woman affected with a succession of those crotchets which are chiefly notable as signs of the unrest of the period, is well known. The whole, however, looks like a tour de force.
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