The narrative opens with Dinah Avery returning from Paris to New York, immediately swept into the relentless social gossip surrounding her friend Eva Litchfield, a brilliant and uncompromising novelist. Eva has recently married Nicholas Van Suydam, a rising architect from an old, conservative New York family dominated by his formidable mother. Throughout the story, various literary figures dissect this union, revealing a profound clash between Eva's total absorption in her craft and Nicholas's traditional desire for domestic tranquility. Eva views her art as a sacred, inviolable calling, demanding absolute solitude and treating human interruptions with cold detachment.
Nicholas, deeply in love yet increasingly alienated, struggles to reconcile his romantic expectations with a wife who seems entirely unyielding and ethereal. The tension escalates as Nicholas's mother attempts to reclaim her son, and their friends—including the cynical essayist Spencer Mapes and the observant Charles Glidden—speculate maliciously on the couple's impending fracture. Eva grapples with the demands of her career, the suffocating nature of her social circle, and the relentless noise of the city, which acts as a hostile force against their fragile peace. As the narrative progresses through parties, social rivalries, and private confrontations, the psychological barriers between Eva and Nicholas deepen. The novel portrays the tragic impossibility of two strong-willed individuals merging their lives without sacrificing their respective creative identities, culminating in a poignant realization of the loneliness inherent in artistic devotion.
