Summary

Paul and Peter Beste-Chetwynde arrive at King’s Thursday on a beautiful English spring day. It is a day so beautiful that Paul begins to believe in the endurance of nature in the midst of “a world that has lost its reason.” The oddness of the house is hated even by its own architect, but the structure strikes awed wonder in the new arrivals.

Paul has just enough time to glimpse his hostess before she takes off to bed and is not seen again for three days, leaving her son to show Paul around and ply him with drinks. She stays out of sight all through a weekend house party, which features a cast of odd characters, all at ease with each other and totally given up to decadent pleasures, quite unaffected by the non-appearance of their hostess.

The one odd note is struck by...