[4] New Outlook printed a short notice that concluded: "The study of this weak but agreeable man is subtle but far from exciting.

"[5] The American Library Association's Booklist described it as "A story of superficial social university life in a suburb of Chicago, with live enough people and a sense of humor hovering near the surface.

"[6] H. L. Mencken, writing in the Smart Set described Cope as beset with three female suitors and "somewhat heavily patronized" by Randolph.

Cope fails to benefit from the efforts of Mrs. Phillips and Randolph and "even forgets to be grateful....It is simply beyond him to imagine that he needs help....A very fair piece of writing as novels go.

After summarizing the plot as the tale of a young academic who is the object of the "pathetically burning interest" of an older woman and an older man, the latter "the sort of wistful elderly parasite to be found in any college community," the review recommended it for certain readers: "The kind of novel which must be enjoyed not for its matter so much as for its quality, its richness of texture and subtlety of atmosphere.

It is a story, delicately done with the most exquisite taste, of a sublimated irregular affection....[T]hough it was filled with dynamite scrupulously packed, it fell as harmless as a dud, only to be whispered about here and there by grave people who wondered why Mr. Fuller should choose such a theme.Carl Van Vechten wrote in 1926 that the subject, "generally taboo in English literature," could only be addressed when handled in the style Fuller adopted, "so skilful, so delicate, so studiously restrained, which he termed "ironic comedy":[9] If Theodore Dreiser had written this book, it would certainly have been suppressed.

I cannot, indeed, name another American writer who could have surveyed the ambiguous depths of the problem presented so thoroughly , and at the same time so discreetly....[I]t would probably prove unreadable to one who had no key to its meaning.

He cited the novel's "exquisite understatement" and Fuller's "beautifully balanced irony on the subject closest to his heart."

In his view, "The novel treads gently around the edge of the erotic" and allows its homosexual characters to "move with moderate ease in a largely straight world."

Cope and Arthur enjoy "the minor and comic troubles of essentially rather pleasurable and straightforward male domesticity.

Their relationship appears to end after Lemoyne, acting the female part in a play, makes a physical advance backstage that offends another male student.

As they return from an evening stroll, Arthur puts his arm around Cope's shoulder: "and Urania, through the whole width of her starry firmament, looked down kindly upon a happier household.

With reference to political interference with academic freedom, an issue of great concern during World War I, he describes (through Randolph) how college trustees are "hard...on Free Speech" which is sometimes "mauled," though the greatest risks are in "Sociology or Economics.

"(113) With respect to literary criticism, he complains (through Cope) that "It irks me to find more praise bestowed on the praised-enough,–even on groups of secondary importance, sometimes just because they are remote (in England, perhaps), and so can be treated with an easy objectivity.

To dig in your own day and your own community is harder..."(114) A monthly poetry magazine is praised as one "which did not scorn poets because they happened to live in the country in which it was published.

Following some time teaching in Winnebago, Wisconsin, Bertram Cope, 24, arrives at the university to spend a year as an instructor in English literature.

At an afternoon tea, he makes a favorable impression on Mrs. Medora Phillips, the wealthy widow of an art dealer, and Basil Randolph, an "academic manqué," a stockbroker and a collector of books and curiosities.

"(42) Randolph visits Mrs. Phillips' wheelchair-using tenant, Joe Foster, her late husband's half-brother, and learns that she imagines Cope may prove a match for one of the three girls who live in her house, Amy, Hortense, and Carolyn.

When Mrs. Phillips invites Randolph to a young people's dinner that will include Cope, he feels "a slight stir of elation.

He thought Randolph was especially attentive to him at dinner and that Joe found him boisterous: "He must have fancied me (from the racket I was making) as a sort of free-and-easy Hercules..., if not as the whole football squad rolled into one."

"(66) In a letter, Cope urges his friend Arthur Lemoyne to leave Winnebago and come to live with him: "...we can go into quarters together: a real bed instead of an upholstered shelf and a closet big enough for two wardrobes.

They pause along the lake shore to swim and discuss the other guests they are joining, "enough fellows to look after the stove and the pump"(87) and the three girls.

He is placed; he is cut off from wide ranges of interesting possibilities; he offers himself less invitingly to the roving imagination...Cope regrets that he has allowed Amy to believe that he is prepared to marry her, having only tried to respond with tact when she pressed him.

Randolph organizes a dinner party to arrange a rescue, where he and Mrs. Phillips, and Hortense, and Pearson agree the couple are not a match.

As they return from a stroll, Arthur puts his arm around Cope's shoulder: "and Urania, through the whole width of her starry firmament, looked down kindly upon a happier household.

He learns that Carolyn has published two sonnets in tribute to him and is at a loss how to respond: "Cope put his hand wearily to his forehead.

"(271) Cope joins another Duneland weekend while Arthur, now cast in an important female role in the Dramatic Society's next presentation, rehearses.

Mrs. Phillips explains that good taste requires a man who plays a female role to avoid too perfect an impersonation.

"(290) In performance, Arthur's successful acting en travesti fails to please: "he was feminine, even overfeminine, throughout.

A few weeks later, he sends Carolyn a perfunctory note reporting that he visited Arthur in Winnebago for a few days and has now taken a new position with "an important university in the East.