Dom Manuel is dead, but we shall meet his lineage in every hero of the cycle. The head of the Poictesme dynasty will outlive himself in his descendants. His daughter Melicent or Melisande, is the heroine of the second part of the saga called “Domnei,” or “the Cult of Ladies.” This is the most perfect collection of stories ever written by the author. It is once more a fairy tale, a very fine legend embellished with ironic traits. Rémy de Gourmont would have called it a masterpiece of dissociation. The American novelist, like Anatole France, has the talent of being at the same time ironic and naïve, and of dressing a disillusioned wisdom in fairy garb. “Domnei,” like “Figures of Earth,” tells of a great love ending in disappointment. Perion de la Forest is in love with Melisande. Both travel to far-away countries in pursuit of adventure and they fight many fights in pagan lands. Are these lands Byzantine or Saracenic; are we in Constantinople or in Palestine; in the Middle Ages or during the Renaissance? Who can tell? Perion and Melisande recall to mind Geoffroy Rudel and Melissinde in Edmond Rostand’s “Princesse Lointaine,” but “Domnei” ends in sarcasms and not in romantic embraces. It is the story of three men, a Christian, a pagan, and a Jew, all in love with the same woman, or rather with the idea which they form of her. Each of them voluntarily wrecks his chances of happiness as soon as he sees that he can attain it. This again seems paradoxical and a little confusing. Had not the author decisively taken the side of romance against everything else in the world? Why should the romantic impulse thus abandon the three lovers? And why should Cabell weave these beautiful legends just to take pleasure in ruining them with his own hands? Doubtless evasion is better than repression, but the artificial heavens created by the author’s imagination are somewhat too attractive to be rejected with such light-heartedness. Yet with what zest these heroes of his run away from them! But let us return to Melisande and Perion de la Forest. They have been made prisoners by the pagan consul Demetrios. Perion is free, but Demetrios keeps Melisande. She bought Perion’s freedom by giving herself to the pagan. She is to be Demetrios’ captive for many long years. This Demetrios is not an altogether disagreeable pagan. He really loves Melisande who tries her best to tame him. But one day he tears himself away from her. Through a sudden intuition he feels the uselessness of love-making, and goes away. Melisande had a third lover, the Jew Ashaverus; he too is caught for a while by the allurement of the Eternal Feminine, and he too, in the end, is a runaway from love. Perion has won over his rivals. After a bloody encounter he finds Melisande still faithful to his memory and both try to love each other according to courtly etiquette. But, alas! how little reality resembles dreams! Perion has found Melisande, but the