SAVED BY A WOMAN'S LOVE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 48, 25 August 1923, Page 19

SAVED BY A WOMAN'S LOVE

"Ponjoia." By.Cynthia Stockley: London : Constable and Co. ' Cynthia Stockley's fondnefcs for ah . African locale is again expressed in this novel. The story opens in "Paris with a young gi r l studentin desperate plight, contemplating drowning herself in the Seine. She is seen by a man who admits that ho used to be the biggest drunkard m Rhodesia. There, as he says in selfdefence, "all one's friends drink, gener. aly spea-kmc,. and if you're a sociable fellow it's difficult not to do the same." ihe^man drinks very heavily, and "Ponjola is the generic name given to alcoi holic beverages. , It flows freely through the pages of the book, flows a "good deal too freely, the abundance of drinking bouts and of drunken men soon .becoming decidedly tedious. The reason wKy the airl wished, to throw herself into the Seme is accounted "for by a mysterious tragedy, the truth of which-it'not revealed until the book's concluding pages have been reached. Desperately imhannv. an outcast from the society in which she had shone, she was on the verge of suicide when she was saved, quite without his beinc aware of it. by a man who restores her faith in human nature. But she cannot, if she would, retv.r.! to her.former mode of existence, and soms things said by this man make her decme to, an to Africa, there to try what may he done for her by that veldt which he had called "a good place to lose one's- ghosts." But ~livimj on *h° v.|,n hn, had declared-to h» a uite

out of ths question for a vjemas. So on this account, and for various . other reasons, she disguises, herself as a roan, and with no one suspecting that shl? is other than the youth, the "Young Desmond she seems, goes to Rhodesia." There she discovers that the man wjio had saved her, and who then was so wonderfully happy, is in dire straits, fast becoming a mental, physical and spiritual wreck. As he had saved her, so she in her turn saves him, with the result which the reader has. foreseen from the very first In spite of one or two.fairly lively incidents, the book is less exciting than are the majority of Miss Stockley's tales. It is not particularly pla-usible; but some of the descriptions of the country and the gold mines are interesting.