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We shall not discuss Mrs. Wharton’s books in detail in this chapter and book for the best of reasons—they leave no room for two opinions of her work. Of almost no other novelist whom we shall consider would it be possible to say this; indeed of some American women novelists there are nearer twenty-two than two opinions. Some writers, like Gertrude Atherton, are subjects of perpetual controversy; others are the cause of wide but sharply defined cleavages of opinion—Gene Stratton-Porter, for example. The work of still others is more properly matter for speculation as to what they may do than estimate of what they have done. But Mrs. Wharton falls in none of these classifications. There is only one opinion about her work: it is excellent but lifeless; it is Greek marble with no Pygmalion near. From this sweeping verdict three—and only three—of her books are to be excepted. They are Ethan Frome and The House of Mirth and Summer. In these three books you can feel the pulse beat. In Ethan Frome the pulse is the feeble quiver of the crushed and dying human heart; in The House of Mirth there is the slow throb of human suffering and anguish, mental no less than spiritual; in Summer there is the excited and accelerated vibration of human passion.