ments as he painted and felt a simple desire to stroke his brown arms and close-cropped head.
Mr. Watson must have felt that his readers might carry his analogies between nature and man past his meaning, for in the course of a conversation between Tom and Susan, Tom, after comparing people to trees, adds, "Don't press the simile too far."
"It would be convenient to know one's own variety," Susan muses, and Tom repeats, "Yes, but don't press the simile. It may lead to false and absurd conclusions."
Mr. Watson himself does not press any of his similes. He makes Tom a very live human being, though, after all, this is the book of Susan, and Tom is an accessory. Gradually you see the working of the one law which Mr. Watson thinks is consistent for tree and man and beast. He shows you people shedding the artificialities of civilization, not the beauties of life, and living at last without any warping of their own natures, so simply that "sin" becomes only a figment of that unreal world that bred false motives. You may not care for the results as he depicts them in the lives of his people. Indeed he is not quite so successful in Deliverence as in the first two books, but at least you can see the simplification of their problems. As artificial standards drop away, Susan, Tom, and even Paul Zalesky, that uneasy, warped egoist, grow as naturally towards happiness as do any of the creatures and plants created before the sixth day.
Susan's trial by fire reaches its crisis when Tom fails her. She cannot see her way through, but all her past training fights for her, and at last she wins past suffering to her own deliverance. She is ready now for life. Tom, who did not know his luck, is distanced and left to work his way out of a new difficulty. Susan goes on without him, and we leave her at last, sure that she will be greater than anything that can happen to her. We are equally sure that something fit for her new vitality will come. The book will have a sequel, whether through Mr. Watson's pen or in the reader's imagination, assisted by some foreshadowings in the present story.
It would be a mistake to stop here and leave the impression that these characters are only incidentally strung upon a theory. Mr. Watson is ⟨not⟩ merely an ethnologist who draws comparisons. His people are (illegible text) enough to walk out of the book. They have time to talk ⟨nonsense,⟩ despair of painting good pictures, and to remember
