I admit that the fact of its publishers having branded _The Road to Understanding_ (CONSTABLE) as "A Pure Love Story" did not increase the hopes with which I opened it. Let me however hasten also to admit that half of it certainly bettered expectation. That was the first half, in which _Burke Denby_, the heir to (dollar) millions, romantically defied his father and married his aunt's nursery governess, and immediately started to live the reverse of happy-ever after. All this, the contrast between ideals in a mansion and love in a jerry-built villa, and the thousand ways in which _Mrs. Denby_ got upon her husband's nerves and generally blighted his existence, are told with an excellently human and sympathetic understanding, upon which I make my cordial congratulations to Miss ELEANOR H. PORTER. But because the book, however human, belongs, after all, to the category of "Best Sellers" it appears to have been found needful to furbish up this excellent matter with an incredible ending. That _Mrs. Denby_ should retire with her infant to Europe, in order to educate herself to her husband's level, I did not mind. This thing has been done before now even in real life. But that, on returning after the lapse of years, she should introduce the now grown-up daughter, unrecognised, as secretary to her father! "Somehow ... you remind me strangely.... Tell me of your parents." "My daddy ... I never knew him." Or words to that effect. It is all there, spoiling a tale that deserved better. * * * * *