"Well--of course--if you heard of a boarder----" Mrs. Bailey made a little dab at Miriam's knee. "You stay where you _are_ my dear." "I do hope it will be a success. The house will be completely changed." "I know it's a risk. But if you get on it pays better. There's less work in it and you've got a house to live in. Nothing venture, nothing _have_. It's no good to be backward in coming forward nowadays. We've got to march with the times." Miriam tried to see Mrs. Bailey presiding, the huge table lined with guests. She doubted. Those boarding-houses in Woburn Place, the open windows in the summer, the strange smart people, in evening dress, the shaded lamps, she would be lost. She could never hold her own. The quiet house would be utterly changed. There would be people going about, in possession, all over the front steps and at the dining-room windows and along the drawing-room balcony. PRINTED BY WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD. PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND The Novels of Dorothy Richardson By MAY SINCLAIR Extracts from an article published in "The Egoist," April, 1918. ... By imposing very strict limitations on herself she has brought her art, her method, to a high pitch of perfection, so that her form seems to be newer than it perhaps is. She herself is unaware of the perfection of her method. She would probably deny that she has written with any deliberate method at all. She would say: "I only know there are certain things I mustn't do if I was to do what I wanted." Obviously, she must not interfere; she must not analyse or comment or explain. Rather less obviously, she must not tell a story or handle a situation or set a scene; she must avoid drama as she avoids narration. And there are some things she must not be. She must not be the wise, all-knowing author. She must be Miriam Henderson. She must not know or divine anything that Miriam does not know or divine; she must not see anything that Miriam does not see. She has taken Miriam's nature upon her. She is not concerned, in the way that other novelists are concerned, with character. Of the persons who move through Miriam's world you know nothing but what Miriam knows. If Miriam is mistaken, well, she and not Miss Richardson is mistaken. Miriam is an acute observer, but she is very far from seeing the whole of these people. They are presented to us in the same vivid but fragmentary way in which they appeared to Miriam, the fragmentary way in which people appear to most of us. Miss Richardson has only imposed on herself the conditions that life imposes on us all. And if you are going to quarrel with those conditions you will not find her novels satisfactory. But your satisfaction is not her concern.