Plot Summary

Nelly is underemployed, in debt, and married to a slacker. She meets Arnaud, a wealthy retired magistrate and businessman whose wife lives in Geneve with another man and whose children hardly speak to him. He offers to pay her debts, no strings attached. She leaves her husband and accepts Arnaud's gift. He then offers a job typing and editing his memoirs, which she takes. She is beautiful, amused, detached; he is observant and probing. She meets his youthful publisher, they begin a love affair. When that ends and it is also clear that her husband and she are irreconcilable, Nelly's delicate friendship with Arnaud is her refuge. Then his wife returns and things must change.—