Above these four figures again looms the majestic invention of "Pa." Every reader can appreciate the truth and humour of Pa, but I doubt if any one without technical experience can realise how the atmosphere is made and completed and rounded off by Pa's beer, Pa's needs, and Pa's accident, how he binds the bundle and makes the whole thing one, and what an enviable triumph his achievement is. But the book is before the reader and I will not enlarge upon its merits further. Mr. Swinnerton has written four or five other novels before this one, but none of them compare with it in quality. His earlier books were strongly influenced by the work of George Gissing; they have something of the same fatigued greyness of texture and little of the artistic completeness and intense vision of _Nocturne_. He has also made two admirable and very shrewd and thorough studies of the work and lives of Robert Louis Stevenson and George Gissing. Like these two, he has had great experience of illness. He is a young man of so slender a health, so frequently ill, that even for the most sedentary purposes of this war, his country will not take him. It was in connection with his Gissing volume, for which I possessed some material he needed, that I first made his acquaintance. He has had something of Gissing's restricted and grey experiences, but he has nothing of Gissing's almost perverse gloom and despondency. Indeed he is as gay a companion as he is fragile. He is a twinkling addition to any Christmas party, and the twinkle is here in the style. And having sported with him "in his times of happy infancy," I add an intimate and personal satisfaction to my pleasant task of saluting this fine work that ends a brilliant apprenticeship and ranks Swinnerton as Master. This is a book that will not die. It is perfect, authentic, and alive. Whether a large and immediate popularity will fall to it I cannot say, but certainly the discriminating will find it and keep it and keep it alive. If Mr. Swinnerton were never to write another word I think he might count on this much of his work living, as much of the work of Mary Austen, W.H. Hudson, and Stephen Crane will live, when many of the more portentous reputations of to-day may have served their purpose in the world and become no more than fading names. DECEMBER, 1917 CONTENTS PART ONE: EVENING CHAPTER I. SIX O'CLOCK II. THE TREAT III. ROWS IV. THE WISH PART TWO: NIGHT V. THE ADVENTURE VI. THE YACHT VII. MORTALS VIII. PENALTIES IX. WHAT FOLLOWED X. CINDERELLA PART THREE: MORNING XI. AFTER THE THEATRE XII. CONSEQUENCES PART ONE EVENING CHAPTER I: SIX O'CLOCK i