[The Last September, The House in Paris, The Death of the Heart, and Eva Trout are each] concerned with a young romantic female awakening to life and love and [have] certain central scenes which focus on the imagination of these young innocents. Readers of Elizabeth Bowen have too easily concentrated on the inherent sympathy in the portrayals of these characters and have too seldom recognized that to Miss Bowen the inexorable romantic mind is doomed, as well as, in its own way, admirable. The scenes which unite the elements of nature, love, and idealism are themselves reminiscent of the Edenic myth and the Garden where reality, in the form of a serpent, sin, and death, intrudes and ultimately destroys the perfection which has been realized. Adding to a sense of the tragic destiny of the inflexible romantic is the paradox that the young idealist commands the greatest sympathy...