WOMEN'S WILES

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 79, 3 April 1926, Page 21

WOMEN'S WILES

"Three Predatory Women." By Sydney Loch. London: George Allen and TJnwin. Them is a kindly humour bohind these three refreshing sketches of the increasing battle of the sexes, a smile at mankind disguised beneath a sympathetic understanding of women at their trickiest. Patricia is the only woman on a sailing ship round the Horn, and the sole male passenger is slowly charmed by her camaraderie into love of the easy, sentimental type she specialises in. They are, of eourso, the only twin souls in the universe. The truth is borne in on him during a storm, when he finds that she has, besides shore conquests of which ho must remain ignorant, stolen the affections oa former voyages of the mate and second mate, to all of whom she has discreditably discussed her man, the captain, whom slio retains, because ho is the only one who will put tip with her. A pirate of the affections, she goes about stirring up trouble, quite unablo to avoid "platonic" friendships she should have learned are dangerous. She and the passenger part sincerely fond of each other. He soliloquises:— She will.never alter. There will bo others after me. But she will always remember me. "Well, give ' thanks for so much. And she will be always in difficulties. And she will always find someone to pull her out of them. If she had any other tern"* perament, I would like to marry her, but if she had another temperament, I might not want to. A fat Jewish tenor, one of tho world's greatest voices, is the second character. His visit to his native town in Poland, after the accession of great riches, brings him into touch with, a voice of greater promise than hia own, and lie ■determines- to give it to the world through his riches, and also to relieve the poverty of his homo town; but he meets (in London) the second type of female pirate, the lady of ravishing beauty, certain to shine in rich surroundings. She skilfully conveys to him the thought that if he docs not see to it she will bo forced to undesirable courses to attain the luxury sho cannot exist without. Sho is pure, unhappy, of courne, has just got rid of an objectionable ' husband through the Divorce Court. What can ho do but marry her? He <lies suddenly of typhus, having seen a procession of men share his own disillusionment, leaving her his millions in the suddenly acquired knowledge that neither ho, nor any of the others, has been requited in kind for his affection. The third talc is the tragedy of youth. Shipped out to Australia, a young Englishman seeks out the back country, and still further back. In the uttermost corner of the desert, he meets a beautiful girl, uncouth, uneducated, with rough and slovenly parents, yet full of generosity and fine feelings. She has never been fifty miles away from Spoonbill Pool. The boy and the girl fall,hopelessly in love, being practically all thore is to do, except fish for barbel. But all the time he feels that she constitutes a danger to his future. This takes active shape when she offers herself unconditionally to him, generously, and with no thought of pulling him down to perpetual fife

in the mulga scrub. He is of the chivalrous type, however, and might have married her, had not a big flood smashed the lotus eating serenity of Spoonbill Pool, and parted them, she to develop into a gaunt, desiccated drudge of the salt bush country, he to fill his proper place in England. The author gives the same impression in all three cases, of a sympathetic understanding of women, combined with very realistic presentations of the arts they work. Sydney Loch describes with authority life on a sailing ship and life in the farthest backblocks of Australia.