THE THIEF

While less powerful, but by no means as forbidding as last year's The Rack, this is again a story of tuberculosis, and though there are many intimations of mortality- they are evaded and the need to live and love is more immediate and important. Certainly for Holly Brand, restless, a little defiant, and somewhat forlorn after four years of sanatoria, who comes to Tucson and stays at a guest ranch where for the first time she leads a life of her own, in spite of the quiet, watchful solicitude of T.C., a doctor there. But it is through him that after ten years she again meets Jules whom she had once loved, a marked man whose painting is his only defense against death. Their attachment is renewed- T.C.'s gentle warnings disregarded and resented- and with Jules' sudden but inevitable death, T.C. is no longer able to help Holly who now joins Jules physically as well as spiritually..... Over and above its first concern with the last absolute- there are other considerations and speculations on the forces which are not limited by life (art, faith, etc., etc.) which give this its interest over and above a strong sympathy for those involved.