_The Safety Candle_ (CASSELL) might have been called, but for the fact that the title has been used already, A Comedy of Age. For this is what it is--only perhaps less a comedy than a tragedy. _Agnes Tempest_ was called the Safety Candle, for the ingenious reason that, though attractive, she burnt nobody's wings. Returning as a middle-aging widow, after an unhappy wifehood in Africa, she meets on the boat two persons, _Captain Brangwyn_, a young man, and a girl-mother calling herself _Antonina Pisa_. Hence the tears. _Brangwyn_ she marries, doubtfully, half-defiantly, despite the difference in years between them; _Antonina_ is taken as a companion and very soon developes into a sick-nurse. For in the space between the ship-board engagement and the wedding a railway accident changes poor _Agnes_ from a still beautiful and active woman to a nerve-ridden invalid. But in spite of this she and _Brangwyn_ marry; and (with the much too attractive _Antonina_ always in evidence) you can guess the result. One odd point; you will hardly get any distance into Miss E.S. STEVENS' exceedingly well-written story without being struck by its resemblance to one of Mr. HICHENS' romances. The relative positions of the members of the triangle, middle-aged wife, young husband, and girl are exactly those of _The Call of the Blood_; while the Sicilian setting is identical. But this of course is by no means to accuse Miss STEVENS of plagiarism; her development of the situation, and especially the tragedy that resolves it, is both original and convincing. The end indeed took me wholly unawares, since as a hardened novel-reader I had naturally been expecting--but read it, and see if you also are not startled by a refreshing departure from the conventional. * * * * *