“‘Olivia! Olivia!’ She stood up, her knitting rigid in her hands, the ball of it speeding away in the dusk of the floor on some private terror of its own. ‘Olivia, I’ll not hear of such things! You are not to speak of them, do you understand! I’ll have nothing to do with them!’ “‘I wanted to know,’ I said. ‘I thought you could tell me....’” “I went over and stood by the window; a little dry snow was blowing--it was the first week in November--beginning to collect on the edges of the walks and along the fences; the landscape showed sketched in white on a background of neutral gray. I heard a movement in the room behind me; my mother came presently and stood looking out with me. She was very pale, scared but commiserating. Somehow my question had glanced in striking the dying nerve of long since encountered dreads and pains. We faced them together there in the cold twilight.” “‘I’m sorry, daughter’--she hesitated--‘I can’t help you. I don’t know.... I never knew myself.’” We follow the girl through marriage, the birth of a son and his death in infancy, the almost accidental disclosure of her gift for the stage, her struggle with her husband, the gradual breach between them and his defection involving the village dressmaker, the long and harrowing period in Chicago after his death when Olivia was without work, without money and often without hope. Success came, of course; it takes death itself to extinguish genius such as she possessed, “of which I was for the moment the vase, the cup.” The finest thing in this remarkable story is the portrayal of that last struggle between Olivia and Helmeth Garrett in which the woman’s gift (or possession) bests even love. But the chapters on Olivia’s childhood are wonderfully penetrating glimpses into the mind of a young girl and the depiction of other characters is of a high order; one of the best being the sketch of Olivia’s brother, Forester, “Forrie,” who made a vocation, a life work, of the business of being a dutiful son. _A Woman of Genius_ is the work of a woman of genius. “Whatever you are minded to say of my work say this--that I ... have not yet come to my full power.” You knew, Mrs. Austin. And now we all know. BOOKS BY MARY AUSTIN