“A man in riding breeches,” the first note ran: “he makes a little creaking noise as he walks along, whipcord rubbing against whipcord, that is like the creaking noise that swans make, flying, when they move their big white wings.” Then followed two lines of comic dialogue. “_Me._ I find the _Fall of the House of Usher_ a most blood-curdling story. “_Frenchman._ Yes, yes, she bloods my curdle also.” The third note recorded that “moss after a shower on a sultry day is like a sponge still damp from the hot bath.” There followed a corollary to the note on prayer. “There is no doubt,” she had written, “that the actual technique of prayer—the kneeling, the hiding the face in the hands, the uttering of words _in an audible voice_, the words being addressed into empty space—helps by its mere dissimilarity from the ordinary actions of everyday life to put one into a devout frame of mind....” To-night she sat for some time in front of the open book, pen in hand, without writing anything. She frowned pensively and bit the end of her pen. In the end she put it on record that “St. Augustine, St. Francis and St. Ignatius Loyola lived dissolute lives before their conversions.” Then, opening her other, her un-secret note-book, she wrote: “X and Y are old friends from childhood. X dashing, Y timid; Y admires X. Y marries, while X is at the war, a passionate creature who takes Y more out of pity (he is wounded) than from love. There is a child. X returns, falls in love with Y’s wife, A. Great passion amid growing anguish of mind—on her part because she is deceiving Y, whom she likes and respects, and daren’t undeceive him for fear of losing the child; on his part because he feels that he ought to give up all this sort of thing and devote himself to God, etc.; in fact, he feels the premonitions of conversion. One night they decide that the time has come to part; it can’t go on—she because of the deception, he because of mysticism, etc. It is a most touching scene, lasting all a last chaste night. Unfortunately Y finds out for some reason—baby ill, or something of the kind—that A is not staying at her mother’s as she said, but is elsewhere. Early in the morning Y comes to X’s flat to ask him to help in the search for A. Sees A’s coat and hat lying on the drawing-room sofa; understands all. In a fury flies at X, who, defending himself, kills him. The end. Question, however; doesn’t it end with too much of a click? too epigrammatically, so to speak? I wonder whether in this twentieth century one can permit oneself the luxury of such effective dramatic devices. Oughtn’t one to do it more _flatly_, somehow? More terre-à-terreishly, more real-lifeishly? I feel that a conclusion like that is almost an unfair advantage taken at the reader’s expense. One ought to arrange it differently. But the question is, how? Can one let them separate and show them living, she _en bonne mère de famille_, he as a coenobite? It would drag it out terribly, wouldn’t it? Must think