Lady Davenant tries to supply a much needed dose of common sense to Laura when she advises that Selina and Lionel aren't worth the bother.

The atmosphere of the story is similar to the corrupt and irresponsible milieu of What Maisie Knew, and Laura simply can't abide the inevitable sleaziness of, well, a London life.

Many critics have wondered why James bothered with such an odd echo of his international theme, when all the characters could easily have been English without affecting the story in any way.

He classed it as part of what he saw as James's best period, when the novelist "reaches what seems to me indisputably his completist artistic maturity: he has got over a certain stiffness, a certain naivete, which characterized his earlier work and he has acquired a new flexibility and a personal idiom."

As mentioned above, Robert Gale tagged the story as "unpleasant" and Edward Wagenknecht found it "not technically impressive," with a "hurried ending" and a "rather forced" international note.