Welsh Rarebit

PAY THY PLEASURE--Elisabeth Inglis-Jones--Doubleday, Doran ($2).

Esther Girling might have been as beautiful as her beautiful mother, but when she was five she was hideously disfigured in a fire in which her mother died. Her father could not bear her, nor could any other males; nor could Esther bear to confront men. When she was 14 she tried to seduce a boy; after that she kept her passion to herself. She had money, read romances ravenously, set desperate stock in a gypsy's prophecy of a house among trees in sunlight, a great love to come. In middle age she got the house, in the mountains of West Wales. Soon after came the great love, Lew Gower, too sea-bottom low a cad even to recognize his own evil. Lew flattered her and slept with her until he got all her money. But when his wife died he married not Esther, as he had promised, but Lettice, a kind and comely young woman. From then on Pay Thy Pleasure grows more and more terribly to its climax.

There is at least as much danger of ham in treating of a hideous woman as in treating of a beauty. Only supreme restraint or daemonic force can make either right. Author Inglis-Jones, lacking grandeur in both, has yet enough force and craft to make a good romance. But it is by no means, as advertised, a "minor masterpiece."

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