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The bare facts of Grace Thrale's love, if enumerated, would have appeared familiar, pitiful, and--to some--even comical. Of this, she herself was conscious. It was the sweetness that was unaccountable.

Because the condition struck her as inborn, she raked her experience for precedent. She dwelt …

Grace told him how her parents had died in the wreck of an Australian ferry when she was a child. Next--so it seemed, as she came to relate it--there had been Christian. Recounting these things, she felt her story was undeveloped, without event. Years were missing, as from amnesia, and the only inf…

Everything he said was stale, sententious. He spoke to her from the lofty height of his all but continuous virtue.

His misery in that place had all been typical, a random sample. The city was cursed with sleazy inevitability--the most sombre thoughts acquired a picked-over character, and pleasure came ready-mixed for quick satiety. He had brought a girl to the hotel because the city expected it of him: loneline…

Caro sat beside this obscure man who had risked himself and lived to tell, offhandedly, the tale. She said, "There are those, too, who befriend the weak because they feel themselves unworthy of the strong. Because they cannot bring themselves to honour abilities greater than their own." But who are…