Tarkington leaves behind the American Midwest, his customary fictional territory, in this 1907 novel about a young American, Robert Russ Mellin, who sets off for Europe, where he reinvents himself as a man of wealth and culture. He succeeds well enough to capture the attention of a beautiful French woman, the Comtesse de Vaurigard—and launch himself into a rarefied and decidedly unfamiliar realm.