Really, if Mr. ROBERT HICHENS continues his present spendthrift course, whatever Board controls the consumption of paper will have to put him on half rations. I believe that his literary health would benefit enormously by such a régime. This was my first thought in contemplating the almost six hundred pages of _In the Wilderness_ (METHUEN), and it persists, strengthened now that I have turned the last, of them. Here is a direct and moving tragedy of three lives, much of the appeal of which is lost in a fog of superfluous words. Of its theme I will tell you only this, that it shows the contrasting loves, material and physical, of two widely divergent types of womanhood. Probably human nature, rather than Mr. HICHENS, should be blamed for the fact that the unmoral _Cynthia_ is many times more interesting than the virtuous but slightly fatiguing _Rosamund_. The former is indeed far the most vital character in the tale, a figure none the less sinister for its clever touch of austerity. Possibly, however, her success is to some extent due to contrast; for certainly both _Rosamund_ and _Dion_, the husband whom she alienated by her unforgiving nature, embody all the worst characteristics of Mr. HICHEN'S creations. Perhaps you know what I mean. Chiefly it is a matter of super-sensibility to surroundings, which renders them so fluid that often the scenery seems to push them about. It is this, coupled with the author's own lingering pleasure in a romantic setting, that delays the conflict, which is the real motive of the book, over long. But once this has come to grips the interest and the skill of it will hold you a willing captive to Mr. HICHENS at his best. * * * * *