The emotional maturation of Eliot Kent, who inherited from his father- who died- and his mother- Lavender- a certain diaphanous romanticism, as he comes up against harsher experience after a childhood indulged, and protected, by several women. With his mother's remarriage to Theodore Hudson, of whom Eliot is always mistrustful, Eliot is thrown in contact with Laura, Hudson's daughter, who exerts considerable attraction. Leaving Laura, to go to work on a New York newspaper, Eliot replaces her with Gretchen, who is pursuing the practical ends of a moneyed marriage. A windmill- tilter by temperament, Eliot's liberalism is often balked by the conservatism of his paper, and in exposing the fascism of his stepfather, he loses his job. And at the end it's Laura again, a little shopworn by this time, but still loving.... Feminine fiction, given the full- even full-blown-treatment, for rental requirements largely.