512 



The Review of Reviews. 



Xotember 1, 1906. 



Thus she thought, crouching lower still, shaking in un- 

 reasoning terror. Now his hands were groping in the 

 darkness upon tbe door itself. The heavy feet had stopped. 

 In the darkness he was leaning against the upper panels, 

 while his fingers groped for the handle, and she heard his 

 laboured breathing. Then the handle turned and was 

 violently shaken; his weight was thrown upon the panels 

 with a thud as of stone; the bolt plate burst from the 

 wall. As a stone man might have crashed through the 

 door, he came lurching, swaying into the room, and stood 

 before them. 



He was white from head to foot, gaunt and terrible, 

 swathed in wool, bound in white linen— a statue that had 

 come to life, a dead man who had risen from the grave. 

 His eyes were upon her now. As he advanced he pointed 

 with outstretched hand at his cowering wife — at guilt per- 

 sonified crouching down by her lover's knees against the 

 wall of books. Then, just as he reached the couch he tried 

 to speak. His voice came hoarse and thick — horrible vocal 

 sounds, not words. Then there was a low. gasping cry, 

 and at the same moment his arm sank as though it had 

 been slowly pulled down by some unseen person, and. 

 staggering forward, he fell face downward across the 

 couch. 



The natural consequence of this miraculous exer- 

 tion of energ}' by the paralysed philosopher was an 

 apoplectic stroke, from which he took three years to 

 recover. He lay for weeks apparently unconscious 

 of everything. His wife, now completely cured of 

 her passion for Stone, was nevertheless compelled 

 to continue relations with her lover. She feels her- 

 self a murderess, and she realises the weakness of 

 the creature for whom she has sacrificed her hus- 

 band's hfe. The chapter describing the alternating 

 agonies of remorse, of fear, of dread lest death 

 should supervene, and of a half desperate hope that 

 the injured husband might pass away before re- 

 gaining consciousness, are very powerfully written. 



Then there was Effie, did she know ? Did she 

 suspect? Alas! the doubt was soon resolved into 

 cruel certainty. Effie divines the truth and com- 

 mits suicide. Her death completed Stone's dis- 

 illusion. Her white hands rose between him and the 

 woman whom he loved. He vanishes from the story 

 and dies at San Remo. 



Burgoyne, however, does not die. He recovers, 

 and when he is himself again he announces in the 

 preface to his magnum opus that while he was lying 

 apparently unconscious, suffering from lack of 

 speech and almost complete paralvsis, he was study- 

 ing the mechanism of thought and watching the 

 rebuilding of the brain. All the while he was per- 

 fectly conscious of the causes of his apoplectic 

 seizure. He knew, therefore, of his wife's guilt, of 

 Stone's treachery, but never by word or look did he 

 imply reproach. Nor did his wife learn until the 

 preface was published that he had from the first 

 been fully aware of her fall. Then when he knew 

 she knew he knew, he forgave her fully, restored 

 her to her old place as " dear Sybil," and she re- 

 mained his obedient, sexless secretary to the end of 

 the stor}-. 



" The Guarded Flame " is very scientific and 

 materialistic. Most readers will find it too scientific, 

 and not a few will resent the supercilious assump- 

 tion that no one of intelligence can be other than a 

 materialist. Of the scientific side of the book I 

 have said nothing : but the following dream-vision 



of the result on the brain of an apoplectic stroke is 



vivid and striking: — 



Once he dveamed that he was climbing iron stairs and 

 walking on iron galleries in some incredibly stupendous 

 power-house of electricity. He had ascended hundreds of 

 feet, and yet he was far below the unseen dome of the 

 mighty house. Thought, sense was crushed by the mys- 

 tery and vastness of the place. All about him, as he 

 climbed from stage to stage, were the grey zinc accumu- 

 lators. Here and there were hollow, inexplicable spaces, 

 but all else was filled with the grev zinc and the wondrous 

 white metal rods— bundles of these endless rods which, 

 close at hand, seemed like faggots in a wood-house fallen 

 into inextricable confusion, but which, as he guessed, 

 were arransed in the curious labyrinthine pattern or- 

 dained by this unknown dynamic law. And through the 

 vast store of rods the electric current flows— now here, 

 now there, an unseen stream of latent fire. Suddenly he 

 understood. 

 This was the brain of Eichard Burgoyne's brain. 

 Then in a moment comes a flash, a spark. Something 

 has fused; and up there, as he crawls by galleries and 

 stairs, he can see the mischief— bundles of the white rods 

 fused into a mass; rods. beds, and staunohions burnt and 

 twisted out of shape— a stop here now and always for the 

 playing current. 



The net impression left by the book is that it is 

 a great pity that amiable philosophers who live only 

 a thought life should not be able to provide for 

 prettv voung orphan girls other than by marrying 

 them. Burgoyne ought to have adopted Sybil as 

 his daughter. She would then have been free to 

 marry Stone when he came across her path. It is 

 wrong to say that anything is impossible in the ex- 

 plosive capacity of suppressed sex. But I confess 

 I find it difficult to believe that Sybil, at the age of 

 thirty-three, could have been liable to such a 

 Krakatoa eruption of dammed-up passion as not 

 only to abandon herself so utterly to a lover, but to 

 exultinglv triumph over the destruction of the hopes 

 of her only girl-friend. Awakened passion of desire 

 is sometimes merciless as a tigress. But there is 

 nothing in the story to suggest that Sybil possessed 

 such a raging volcano of latent sex as to render her 

 oblivious to all considerations of honour and duty. 

 If she had been Italian or Spaniard it might have 

 been less incredible. But an English girl, nurtured 

 and disciplined like Sybil — I confess Mr. Maxwell's 

 story leaves me unconvinced. The problem as to 

 what should be done by the young wives of old men, 

 when young men fall in love with them, is one of 

 perennial interest. The event is always happening, 

 and must alwaxs happen, unless the young wife is 

 ugly and of a shrewish disposition, or she is kept 

 imprisoned in the recesses of a zenana. There is 

 not much difficulty about it so long as the young 

 wife does not share her lover's passion. But when 

 she does, then the trouble begins. No general solu- 

 tion can be presented. Each case must be dealt with 

 on its own merits. Sometimes separation, some- 

 times platonics, will suffice. But the one thing that 

 ought to be ruled out as intolerable and impossible 

 is the course taken by Sybil. It may be, and often 

 is, impossible to avoid loving another man better 

 than your husband, especially when your husband is 

 a huiiband only in name ; but it ought to be, and 

 usually is, bv no means so difficult to keep that 

 mutual passion sternly within the frontiers which 



