Mr. Van Vechten has hitherto, often and with justice, been compared to Mr. Aldous Huxley, by reason of the insouciant flippancy of his fiction. But now he has gone beyond Huxley through the production of a story which, without ever losing wit, dexterity, an instinct for civilized charm, yet presents full-length and solidly the portraits not only of the gay countess but of the lugubrious persons whom she is fated to meet, to court, to hurt so pitifully,...