Sacred & Profane

THIRD ACT IN VENICE--Sylvia Thompson--Little, Brown ($2.50).

Great novelists live with their characters; lesser ones pay calls. Not a great novelist but a good one, Sylvia Thompson is an adept at taking her leave, never embarrasses her characters or her readers by staying with them too long at a stretch. Third Act in Venice, her latest (and ninth) novel, is a brilliant exhibition of her episodic power, her knowledge of how to be absolutely tactful though relatively true.

If Author Thompson had lingered long with any of the people in Third Act in Venice, readers might have found some ordinary, others downright unlikable. might have decided their story was a highly colored mess. Thanks to Author Thompson's restless skill, however, it emerges from dubious beginnings into tragic romance, a moral tale to melt a worldling. Francis Radnor, a "Sir" and a gentleman, but not as aristocratic as he looked, had enough money for his wants. His wants were to float about the world, now as a well-connected butterfly, now as an insect with a taste for carrion. In short, Sir Francis was a double-lifer.

His velleities toward the good life, true taste, beautiful women who were also ladies weakened as he drew on toward middle age; but before he had resigned himself to the role of gentleman amidst inferiors a legacy gave him the means of making a new start. He left his vulgar acquaintance, went to London to be a publisher and fall decently in love with some well-bred Diana. In Adria, a girl in 400, he met his ideal. Because he was used to commoner clay he put her on a pedestal, solaced his more natural hours with a French manicurist. Unfortunately for herself, Adria fell in love with him.

Francis did what he could in a situation that frightened him. Summoning up all his gentleman's blood, he kicked out the manicurist. Terrified but hopeful, he allowed himself to become engaged to Adria. He thought he was safe when he went to visit Adria in Venice, but his gentlemanly resolves rapidly evaporated in the hot Italian sunshine, the confining uses of a society which kept Adria impregnably surrounded. He continued to think of her as sacred, his manicurist as profane. When the manicurist, a determined creature, followed him to Venice, the rest was easy. Though Francis never knew for certain how it happened that Adria took an overdose of sleeping-powder, he felt the responsibility was his. Too late he knew that he had profaned Adria's love by his vulgar idea of what was sacred.

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