Harold Eastwood, a conventionally-minded accountant, lives an uneventful life in a South Coast town with his wife, Isabel, and two children. Though a chance encounter in the train, Alec Goodrich comes into their lives. He is a minor novelist, to whom Harold's knowledge of income-tax allowances proves useful. Isabel has romantic leanings and a smattering of literature, and the first visit of a personage to their modest home is a matter of moment, and one of high comedy for the reader. By the time Harold is invited to pay a return visit to the author at St. Milo's, she already dreams of being Alec's mistress.
However, not Isabel but Irma, the Austrian barmaid at the "Green Dragon", has caught Alec's wayward fancy. How Harold is involved as an intermediary, forming a double love-affair, makes an enthralling story, and it is not until almost the last page that the irony of the title is disclosed. Mr. Hartley has never written more searchingly or more wittily, and the two children, who provide a commentary and light relief, are convincing and delightful.