The Pool in the Desert. By Sara Jeannette Duncan. (Methuen.
and Co. 6s.)—It is difficult to make up one's mind which of the stories in Mrs. Cotes's new book 35 the most uncomfortable and painful. In the story which gives its name to the collection the chief characters are two married women, intimate friends, and the catastrophe is that one falls in love with the son of the other.. This is quite disagreeable enough ; but the next story," A Mother in India," is no more enlivening. Here mother and daughter are
so hopelessly estranged by their separation during the girl's childhood that the mother enjoys laughing at her child's limita- tions and absurdities, just as she would at those of a stranger. The third story, which merely deals with the efforts of some Simla officials to conventionalise a young artist, is the most endurable. But what has Mrs. Cotes done with her inimitable gift of humour? Except for the third story; faintly outlined: above, the whole book very nearly deserves the epithet " morbid," and this is an adjective which it is a grief as well as a surprise to have to mention in connection with any work of " Sara Jeannette D uncan."
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