Twenty Mattresses

THE SILVER VIRGIN--Ida A. R. Wylie --Doubleday, Doran ($2.50). In the little Spanish church of the Silver Virgin, where years ago he had found Justine, Gale sought sanctuary from his well-bred kindly friends. But friends being what they are, one of them broke sanctuary; and not knowing why Gale had left Justine, begged him to be reconciled to her. Bitterly, Gale: "Do you ever read your Apocrypha? You should. You really should. It has some fine eloquent passages. 'Like a eunuch embracing a virgin and groaning heavily.' What a magnificent metaphor! Those old fellows knew how to express themselves. They didn't mince matters. They got down to the heart of things."

The War had sent Gale back to his passionate young wife, a husband and yet not a husband. For several years they stuck it out, till cumulative suspicion and repression hurled Justine into the arms of a lover, and Gale to the distractions of Spain. The lover proved less satisfying than the bull-fight--not the conventional scarlet-cloaked trickery, but a duel during which Gale rode bareback, crashing down gorges, wallowing through torrents, staggering up embankments, till finally he brought the bull to its knees.

A dramatic lapse, perhaps, but an exultant climax to the even tenor of sadness that pervades the book. Miss Wylie's characters are extremely given to hurting each other and themselves, like the pea-feeling princess. This quality of sensitive thorough-bredness makes them immensely appealing--if just a touch fairytale.

The similarity between this plot and hard-boiled Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises is great but not suspicious. Ida A. R. Wylie, author of Children of Storm, The Mad Busman, has literary stature, would never stoop to pilfer.