It is to the unusual set of conditions that we owe most, and the author of the novel of which these words are meant to be a prelude has enjoyed those conditions to an exceptional degree. Diplomatic life has the special advantage that it establishes close relations as a matter of course. It admits one to the palace of which the chance traveller sees only the windows and walls. It knows no slow approaches or apprenticeships. Not only are the barred doors thrown open, but to the most sealed society the foreigner in diplomacy is given the key. Of this _entrée_ not merely to foreign houses and hearths but to foreign points of view Mrs. Anderson has been always quick to perceive the potentialities. Revealed by her other books as gifted with a power of observation at once delicate and shrewd, she has shown a remarkable faculty for reaching the significance of things beyond the objective and the ceremonious. She knows the value of European stateliness as set over against our American slap-dash; and she can also throw into relief the human spontaneous qualities in our American slap-dash in contrast to the calculated efforts of European stateliness. In her game she plays the New World against the Old, and the Old World against the New, in the spirit of comedy, not without its tragic points. She uses her hemispheres like cymbals, for resonance and clash, for emotion and conflict, and also for joy, for wonder, for laughter, and for the leaping of the heart. BASIL KING. THE LOST LADY These letters and the journal of a young American girl travelling in Europe came to me under circumstances as strange as they themselves were unusual. Some of the letters were written on heavy blue stationery without monogram or heading; some bore the names of various continental hostelries: many were written on the embossed paper of the United States Embassy at Rome. All were faded with age and were without envelopes, definite dates, or identifying signatures. They came into my possession in the following manner. I was in Paris on leave that terrible Good Friday night of 1918, when the spring drive was on. The Red Cross had ordered me to start for the front next morning with some other nurses, and we were to leave at an early hour, so I had paid my hotel bill, packed my bag, and gone to bed, partly-clad, as was the custom in those exciting times. But I had hardly got settled for sleep when the shrieking siren announced an air raid. My room was on the top floor, and offered too good a target, so I jumped out of bed, slipped into my uniform, seized my bag, and ran out into the hall. It was in darkness, save for flashes from pocket-torches. Half-dressed people were hurrying through the corridor and groping their way down the staircase to the cellar for safety.