Disappointed Bridge

THE BRIDGE--Naomi Royde-Smith-- Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

In James Joyce's Ulysses Stephen Dedalus defines a pier as "a disappointed bridge." The bridge Andra Pontifex tried to build was also disappointed. Andra married Everard Pontifex, clergyman widower with a large family, without thinking much about it one way or the other. He was a kindly soul; she liked having her own house and living in the English countryside she had always known. Perhaps she would never have realized she was not happy had not her child been born dead and the doctor told her she must never have another. From then on she and Everard lived like brother & sister: it never occurred to them they could do anything else.

A visit to her married stepson, an artist living on the Riviera, started the trouble for Andra. There she was introduced to "bohemianism"--other values than her own--and liked it. Watching other love affairs made her wish she had had one. On her way back on the train she met a young Frenchman, who followed her to Avignon. They spent several nights together; then Andra tore herself away, went back to England, Everard and the Rectory, sadder, wiser and aging.

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