Summary
Alys Gilson, dewy-eyed but blade-sharp, flees the velvet prison of her ancestral manor for gaslit avenues where the Culture Club recites manifestos on unshackled desire. Under the sulphuric charisma of Peyton Le Moyne—a dandy Mephistopheles in velvet loafers—she signs a matrimonial pact predicated on perpetual opt-out clauses. Enter Thurston Bruce, earnest jurist from beyond the salon’s incense haze; he swallows the poisoned contract, believing love can be legislated like a street-car ordinance. Soon the apartment becomes a 24-hour symposium of berets and absinthe, while Bruce’s patience erodes faster than newsprint in rain. In the coup de grâce, he declares the union void—he’s smitten with Marion Hamilton, a secretary who promises doilies, fidelity, and a quiet breakfast table. Alys, gutted, retreats to her parents’ mausoleum of respectability only to discover Bruce lounging in the conservatory: the entire rupture was a theatrical shock-therapy engineered to cure her of bohemianism and make her heart kneel.
Synopsis
Alys Gilson leaves the complacency of her parents' home to move to the big city and partake in the lofty ideals espoused by the Culture Club. As a member of this Bohemian group, Alys succumbs to the influence of Peyton Le Moyne who preaches that marriages should be founded on absolute freedom. Consequently, when Thurston Bruce, a young lawyer not of the group, proposes to Alys, she accepts on the condition that the marriage be dissolved if either finds their love has ceased to exist. Bruce soon wearies of his wife's "serious thinkers" who occupy his apartment day and night, and their relationship becomes strained. Finally, Bruce informs Alys that they must terminate their marriage because he is in love with his secretary, Marion Hamilton, who will give him a real home. Brokenhearted, Alys returns to her parents' home to find Bruce waiting there for her and discovers that the whole story was a scheme to bring her to her senses.
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