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[...] “Consider it as a business proposition,” he pursues with gentle irony. “I am not pleading with you; I will not use force. We are in the twentieth century; you are a free woman and I want you to make a rational choice. I hope one day you will feel some affection for me. I have a right to hope,…

Nice for an afternoon—but too strenuous a business to incarnate some guiding star or even an exotic fish for a floundering millionaire. Has she missed her calling? She recalls backing out of a very attractive offer two years ago: a yacht, villa in Nice, apartment in Paris. Wanted her to fly to San …

...go somewhere else for coffee and dessert? No, she will finish the wine, it’s marvelous. She must remember the name—no, it’s better not. It’s quite wonderful not to be Sophie Blind just now. It’s wonderful enough to be this someone else in the car. He asks why she is smiling. She answers with a n…

“But why?” Ezra gasps.

He stands stunned in the hallway, still in his galoshes, coat half unbuttoned, a night’s train journey written on his face.

“I don’t want to be married to you,” she repeats.

“But why, Sophie?”

His look of utter bewilderment belies the least suspicion of a rift bet…

The day hangs suspended—a dull golden weave on which an impressionist master’s brush has sketched, placed at random, the familiar furnishings of a New York City apartment: the whiskey bottle, jar of instant coffee, cans of soup and spices on the shelf, a torn bag of sugar, ashtrays, magazines and a…