Overemphasized Purity
Love’s Legend, by Fielding Hall. [Henry Holt and Company, New York.]
With a somewhat overemphasized regard for purity, Fielding Hall approaches the narration of this honeymoon trip down a Burmese river. The novel—if such a dissertation on the early marriage state could be called a novel—is told in rather peculiar fashion, by the man and woman alternately, at first, and later on with the help of two more people.
The man is prone to burst forth into fairy tales to explain every point of argument to Lesbia. He tells her of a beautiful princess who was blindfolded and kept within an enclosed garden that she might never know the ways of man.
“They told her that the bandage made her see more clearly than if her eyes were free. For they had painted images upon the inside of her bandage and told her they were real.”
Silence.
“And she believed it. Then came a Prince. He wooed the Princess and he won her. So he took her with him out of her garden. They came into the world and passed into a forest. There they were quite alone.
“Take off your bandage,” said the Prince. “Look at the world and me.”
“I am afraid,” she sighed; “the world is evil.”
“It is God’s world,” the Prince replied. “He lives in it.”