While Walter and Anne Majendie are upon their honeymoon rumors reach the wife of scandal attached to her husband’s name. Anne at once enters the cloister of her own spiritual high mindedness thereby securing for herself a “sort of spiritual divorce from him, while she martyrised her body which was wedded to him.” Miss Sinclair delineates intimately the cold virtue of the wife as by degrees it drives away the half boyish, genuinely honest and wholly devoted husband who seeks consolation in a little shop girl. Only after terrible suffering does Anne realize that Walter has kept all his marriage vows except one, and she had broken all of hers, except one. Her understanding comes as a surprise, and permits the curtain to be rung down upon a happier group than seems possible from the stand point of logic.
“It is a tribute to Miss Sinclair’s skill that she has not made Anne a bore; she is interesting as well as unpleasant.”
| + + | Acad. 73: 929. S. 21, ’07. 430w. |
“Whether it has a place in a large library or not, there is no excuse for the small library putting money into it, first because it has appeared serially in the ‘Atlantic’ during the year and is, therefore, accessible to those who desire it, and second, because it should be consigned to the restricted shelves for which there is no need in the small library.”
| + − | A. L. A. Bkl. 3: 181. O. ’07. |
“Unusually well-constructed and interesting.”
| + | Ath. 1907, 2: 204. Ag. 24. 170w. |
“This novel of Miss Sinclair’s is one of more than ordinary power and with a more pressing raison d’être than have most novels, but it is almost certain that those who might draw from it a profitable idea are not the ones who will read it.” Dolores Bacon.
| + + | Bookm. 26: 276. N. ’07. 1030w. |