Summary

Recently married Edward and Florence sit on the outdoor terrace of the hotel where they are spending their honeymoon. As they eat their badly cooked dinner, they look out the beach and the ocean beyond, and at the profusion of heartily growing plants along the path down. Narration describes their mutual excitement and nervousness, the sense that they are at the beginning of something new, exciting, and freeing. “This was still the era … when to be young was a social encumbrance, a mark of irrelevance, a faintly embarrassing condition for which marriage was the beginning of a cure” (6). There are also references to their specific hopes for the future – Edward’s business career, Florence’s musical career, what to do with a financial gift from her father. Narration then describes, in some detail, their respective apprehensions about their first sexual experience together. For Edward...