She is radiantly happy as she welcomes Barry to her villa. She knows that he has come from America to ask her to become his wife. He is thirty years old, and while worn down to a painful thinness she has no doubt whatever that rest and loving attention will soon restore his robust youth. _Then_ she will live. She has never known life; she has been cramped and confined all these years; when she marries her young lover, she will know the passion of _living_. But alas! Barry wooes tamely. Elizabeth is coy, expecting more heat. Barry cannot give it, the wooing lags, no engagement occurs, and then comes the shipwreck of Elizabeth’s hopes. Barry falls in love with a divinely gifted and lovely young creature who is also a guest at the villa. A strange thing happens to the reader. Elizabeth has won _his_ heart, and she holds it to the end. She is so womanly in her devotion to Barry; so womanly in her grief at losing him, so majestic in her renunciation of her own hopes, so beautifully generous and helpful to the man and the girl who have broken her own heart, that the reader feels himself about to say: “One Elizabeth were worth a dozen Claras.” For the reader does not fall in love with Clara. She is a bit unnatural and uncanny. Her mother, the bad but magnificent Mrs. Langham, is far more real and interesting. As to Barry himself, the reader never does quite understand why the women find him so irresistible. It does not appear that he is very handsome, or very accomplished, or very anything else, excepting that he is abominably selfish in his dealings with Elizabeth. The women who fall in love with him rave about his “honesty,” but that is a quality which seldom carries women off their feet. Decidedly Elizabeth remains the heroine and next to her in interest comes the bad, beautiful Mrs. Langham. The author tells the story with superb art. There are no incidents, no thrills, no dramatic climaxes, and yet there is not a dull page in the book. _Cause for Joy_ “Well, now, which do you think is correct, ‘measles is’ or ‘measles are’?” chucklingly inquired the landlord of the Torpidville tavern. “Also, would you say, ‘The Glee Club are’ or ‘the Glee Club is’?” “D’know!” replied the patent-churn man, shortly. “Those old catch-questions don’t interest me a little bit. But what I’d like to know is why everybody looks so pleased and smiling today? Is there a picnic or celebration or something of the sort on the tapis?” “No, skurcely that. It’s the relief that is tickling ’em, not anticipation. You see, the Glee Club of the village Academy was going to give a concert and cantata tomorrow night, assisted by our best local talent, and now the measles have, or has, as the case may be, broken out, up there in the temple of learnin’, and every member of the Glee Club have, or has, got it, or them, good and plenty and the entertainment has been indefinitely—haw! haw!—postponed.” [Illustration: _The Say of Other Editors_]