Description
"There are four women in Miss Alice Brown's novel, "Margaret Warrener," and only one of them Is of a type in the least resembling those familiar to her readers. Two are singers; one is an actress married to a poor man and long withdrawn from the stage, and one is a woman of good family who lives by what she calls Journalism--that Is to say, publishing her own monologues as interviews, by "society" reporting and by scandal. At intervals she gambles In stocks, descants on the past glories of her family, and makes love to her cousin, the heroine's husband. The action of the story goes on in the Boston lodgings of these last two women and in a suburban house once the possession of the two cousins' family, but owned by a soap millionaire whom the Journalist permits to make money for her, using his own capital, and to whom she privately engages herself. The husband, morally and spiritually a mere lump of weak selfishness, is further enfeebled by the knowledge that he Is doomed to death from a malignant tumor, and his gradual deterioration under the influence of this foe within and of the Journalist from without Is traced with much power. The wife fights for his love and for the safety of his soul, learning her tactics In the bitter school of experience, and as he sinks she rises to new heights, and when circumstances make her return to the stage possible, she finds that life has made her an artist. He, on the other hand, once more taking up his pencil at his cousin's bidding, discovers that the flickering talent of his youth has been extinguished by self-indulgence, and that he Is doomed to end his life as a failure stripped of the last poor vesture of self-conceit."--Amazon.com