The Tent of Blue. By Lady Dorothy Mills. (Duckworth.
7s. 6d. net.)—This novel opens with a rather depressing account of the unsuccessful marriage of a " smart " young couple,
Geoffrey and Rachel Poynder, in which the husband's insane and unfounded jealousy makes the wife's life a burden. Matters change for the better after Rachel has been worried into an attack of bronchitis and has left England to convalesce in Algiers with a couple of middle-aged friends, Mr. and Mrs.
Haynes. Mr. Haynes, however, knocks up and Rachel goes off into the desert alone. She comes across a delightful old Roman Catholic priest, Father Ignace, who rescues her from the unwelcome attentions of a French officer and carries her off for
peace and rest to his house deep in an oasis of the desert. The account of the train journey across the sands and later of the camel ride to Azra is picturesque, and the author has
the faculty of making her readers realize with extraordinary vividness the charm of desert travel and of life in au oasis :—
" It was a typical African day, burning, blue, cloudless. Not a living object was visible. On every side the molten gold of the -sand rushed on to meet the ultramarine of the sky. . . A belt of palms sprang into sight, grew steadily larger and evolved into a large and prosperous oasis. Under the palms were gardens of fruit trees and a little corn, watered by a stream some two yards wide, that bubbled and gurgled deliciously."
Readers who know the Fast will, when they read these chapters of the book, almost imagine that they feel the burning heat of
the sun, smell •the strange smells of the bazaar, and hear the notes which float down from .the minarets as the muezzin calls his flock to prayer. Unfortunately, Rachel does not content herself with the society of Father Ignace, and, indeed, he goes away, leaving her as the tenant of his house. Later on he introduces her to a certain Hugh Tresham, who is a type of the commonplace gallant explorer, and with him and his friend
Rachel takes a further journey into the desert, during the course of which the travellers have at least one hairbreadth escape from death. Hugh and Rachel fall in love with each other, and the novel, when they go back to England, returns to common-
place lines. Those tourists who wish to revive a passion for the East cannot, however, do better than read from chapter 5 to the end of chapter 12 of the book.
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