What is, we ask ourselves, this public with so catholic a taste? We rarely see anyone enter one of these bookshops. There are always two or three people gazing enviously at the window, but self-consciousness restrains them. They dare not publicly declare their interest by purchasing a volume. Indeed, there are times when we wonder how these shops carry on their business at all. Are they, we wonder, a spectacle and nothing else? Do the same books remain there from one season to another for the simple reason that no one buys them? A pleasant fancy, but apparently they do carry on a very excellent, a very thriving, trade. I once asked a proprietor if the trade slump had at all affected him. “Very little,” he said. “Just before the armistice I ordered two thousand copies of _Five Nights_, and I sold the last one yesterday.” Two thousand copies of one book in one shop in three years. That man must have sold on an average two copies of _Five Nights_ every day. Can Mr Bumpus say as much for Shakespeare? Two thousand copies in three years! It is easy, of course, to shrug one’s shoulders, to say: “But for such stuff there will always be a public.” And yet so vague a gesture provides no explanation of this incredible popularity. The appeal of _Five Nights_ is not, I believe, due to what bishops describe as the baser instincts of human nature. Victoria Cross wrote it in the innocence of her heart, firmly believing it to be a good book. It is a sincere book as _The Rosary_ is sincere, and _The Way of an Eagle_ is sincere. It is written with feeling; she enjoyed writing it. Its sentimental sensuality is warm and cloying and pleasant, like a hot bath after too good a dinner. There even comes a moment when the heat of the bath mingling with the heat of Pommard makes us ask ourselves whether it is such appalling drivel after all. A couple of pages more we decide it is; but there was that moment of doubt. Thus it happens, I conjecture.