You shall lie on the rock like the crest of a wave White and vague in the distance. Your hair shall play over you like a sunbeam And as I come running to you I shall embrace the sea. You shall play on the wide sheets of sand Golden against the blue water paint Curling over the edge of the world And your arms shall beckon to me until I shall go mad And run to you to embrace the sun. You shall lie, a silver jewel in the ebony arms of shadows, Your breath stirring the white flowers of your bosom You shall lie in the velvet depths of silence Like a white stain on the night. You shall call to me and I shall bend over you, And that is all there is to life— I bending over you in the darkness. Soul-Sleep and Modern Novels WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT An American novelist who wanted sales, and who was willing to sacrifice all but the core of his character to get sales, found himself recently in a challenging situation. As he expressed it: “Along about page two hundred in the copy of the novel I am on, the woman’s soul wakes up.” “A woman’s novel?” I asked. “Meant to be,” said he. “Study of a woman all through. Begins as a little girl—different, you know—sensitive, does a whole lot of thinking that her family doesn’t follow. Tries to tell ’em at first, but finds herself in bad. Then keeps quiet for years—putting on power and beauty in the good old way of bumps and misunderstanding. She’s pure white fire presently—body and brain—something else asleep. She wants to be a mother, but the ghastly sordidness of the love stories of her sisters to this enactment, frightens her from men and marriage as the world conducts it——” “I follow you,” said I. “Well, I’m not going to do the novel here for you,” he added. “You wouldn’t think there was a ray of light in it from this kind of telling. A man who spends five months of his best hours of life in telling a story, can’t do it over in ten minutes and drive a machine at the same time——” “We’re getting out of the crowd. What does the girl do?” I asked. “Well, she wanted a little baby—was ready to die for it, but had her own ideas of what the father should be. A million married women have thought the same thing here in America—pricked the obscene sham of the whole business but too late. Moreover they’re the best women we’ve got. There are——” He actually shook the hat off his head—back into the seat at this point. “There are some young women coming up into maturity here in America—God bless ’em—who are almost brave enough to set out on the Quest for the Father of the baby that haunts them to be born.... That’s what she did.