well-being, so redolent is the setting of all that is good and sweet.
Miss Corelli's publisher was delighted with the manuscript. "I have read all," wrote Mr. Bentley, on March 22d, 1887; "what a nuisance space is! Here are three hundred miles separating us, and I feel I could say what I have to say fifty times better by word of mouth than with this pen. . . . 'Thelma,' as long as it is Norwegian, is a lovely dream—a romance full of poetry and color. 'Thelma' in London (I speak of the book) I cannot like. Of course the contrast, if not too deep, is effective. . . . How glad I was to get back to Norway! The death of Olaf is very picturesquely painted, and little Britta is a charming little brick." In a previous letter, written when he had perused up to "page 1017," he said: "The character of Sigurd I consider a most beautiful creation. I hardly like to write what I really think of it, since either it is of the very highest order, or I have no claim to critical ability of any sort. His whole career, his half-thought-out, half-uttered exclamations, the poetry of his thoughts, his passion so noble and so pitiful, the grand and highly dramatic close of his life, must give you a position which might be denied for 'Vendetta' as melodrama. Here there is nothing of that sort of life—here one
