At eighteen, ingenue Barbara has written a book that blossoms--a ""quiet backwater kind of thing""--which brings her to London and the theater and marriage to Sir Halliday, a Barrymore who dumps her before long. So it's the natural life Bill, son of a Thane in Scotland (and an almost too natural childbirth lost in the mountains--twins at that) before Halliday's death finally breaks the hasp of the ""diamond cage."" Find that quiet backwater where it can bloom unseen.