The elderly beauty who cannot quench her desire for love is a stock figure of fiction, though no doubt the theme still contains unexplored possibilities. Unfortunately Miss Hansford-Johnson, who does not seem to feel any compelling interest in her subject, has treated it in a mechanical way [in her novel An Avenue of Stone]…. One is not quite sure whether Miss Hansford-Johnson fully realizes that the woman who cannot grow old is a pathetic rather than a tragic figure. The attitude of the devoted though impatient stepson who tells the tale suggests that the reader is meant to see a grandeur in Helena which cannot possibly be there. The young protégé who leaves her without warning and the friends who gossip about her are too severely condemned for an inevitable attitude.

Sympathy with the heroine could have been won only by an extraordinarily vivid and vital presentation...