Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/276

 *suade the world that he has painted the picture. Angela, happily, is not killed. Varillo, who escapes, enters into a conspiracy to declare and maintain that the great picture is his. He is got out of the world and out of the book by perishing in a fire at a monastery to which he had been taken. Such treachery it is almost impossible to conceive. Yet those who condemn the incident should remember some of Marie Corelli's own personal experiences, with which the world has now to some extent become acquainted. Angela subsequently marries Gys Grandit.

Throughout the book there are a good many discourses by Aubrey Leigh and Gys Grandit on the subject of Christian Democracy. What seems to be the main desire of this party is "a purified Church—a House of Praise to God, without any superstition or Dogma." We must confess, however, that we recognize the truth of the remark made by Gherardi—one of the Roman prelates—"You must have Dogma. You must formulate something out of a chaos of opinion"; and neither through Manuel, Aubrey Leigh, nor Gys Grandit does Marie Corelli tell us how she would build up this simple universal church of which she speaks so much. We may, however, expect in a further book to have Miss Corelli's constructive conceptions