Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/157

 very daring and original indeed; and the characters are distinctly individualised. They are characters, they are human people, they are persons, they aren't mere personages, mere types. Had Gallia been a roman-à-clef, I think I could have named Dark Essex; I think I could have named Gurdon, too; I'm sure I could have named Miss Essex. As for Bobbie Leighton, little as we see of him, he is a creature of the warmest flesh and the reddest blood; and I, for my part, shall always remember him as a charming fellow whom I met once or twice, but all too infrequently, in Paris, in London, and whose present address I am very sorry not to possess. But Gallia herself I could not have named, though she is as real to me now as she could have been if I had actually known her half my life. If Miss Dowie had, in this book, accomplished nothing more than her full-length portrait of Gallia, she would have accomplished much, for a more difficult model than Gallia a portraitist could hardly have selected. Gallia—so terribly modern, so excessively unusual—a prophecy, rather than a present fact—a girl, an English girl, who declares her love to a man, and yet never ceases to be a fresh, innocent, modest, attractive girl, never for an instant becomes masculine, and never loses her hold upon the reader's sympathy!

A writer of fiction could scarcely propose to himself a riskier adventure than that which awaited Miss Dowie when she set out to write the chapter in which Gallia roundly informs Dark Essex that she loves him. Failure was almost a certainty; yet, so far from failing, Miss Dowie has succeeded with apparent ease. The chapter begins with a very fine and delicate observation in psychology. The blankness, the vague pain, rhythmically recurring, but for the specific cause of which Gallia has to pause a little and seek—that is very finely and delicately observed. I remember; there was something that has made me unhappy: what