Impertinent

ARACHNE--Eden Phillpotts--Macmillan ($2.25). Slangy conversation between classic Greeks suggests Erskine; muses conversant with the Charleston recall various recent fantasies; and the wilful woman who (almost) came to woeful end has been heard of before. She would have her profession, and she did excel at it, so the gods had to interfere and deposit her in the domesticating arms of her lover, soon husband and five times father. Bromide, he had said "No woman ever made anything more beautiful than a complete and perfect baby," but Arachne swore she preferred making the complete and perfect web of brilliant silks. Athene promised to teach her, and repented when the pupil surpassed her instructress in talent and conception--dangerous impertinence. Her prosaic lover defined romance as "uncomfortable and dangerous things happening to someone else," but Arachne's malapert masterpiece was a nevertheless romantic tapestry of gods and their foibles. To Athene's vengeful annoyance, a jury of immortals promptly, indifferently, judged it superior to the goddess's weaving, and spent the hour allotted them for solemn decision in Babbitt discussion of the relative merits of liquors.