G.F. TURNER'S allowing one hero to say of the other
that he had "the interminable limbs" of an aristocrat. To the end of
the book indeed I was uncertain whether such occasional lapses were
meant to illumine the character of the supposed speaker or were
unintentional. But again to quote, this time a phrase in which Mr.
TURNER clearly shares my own delight, "before we were through with
the affair" such details had ceased to be of moment. The plain fact is
that _The Woman of the Picture_ is the most breathless, irresistible
piece of convincing impossibility you have read for ages. I decline to
struggle with any transcription of the plot. On the wrapper you
will observe the woman stepping bodily out of the picture, like the
ancestors in the whisky advertisement; this, however, is a symbolic
rather than an actual presentment. But there is plenty without it:
a rightful heir, mountain castles amid the eternal snows, a villain
(with sorceries), half-a-dozen attempted murders and the most
hair-lifting duel imaginable. Soberly considered the whole business is
a riot of delirium, belonging flagrantly to that realm where all the
world's a screen, and all the men and women merely movies. But the
unexpected charm of the book is that with the possible exceptions
noticed above) it is told with a touch of distinction, even of
subtlety, that invests its wildest audacities with an atmosphere of
fantastic truth.
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