Summary
A porcelain heiress, Marion Ainsworth, treats love like a gilded toy—twirling it until its gears jam. When her fiancé, the prodigal surgeon Paul Carrington, answers the siren call of a dying child rather than her picnic whims, she strangles time itself: intercepting the hospital telegram, letting the minutes hemorrhage. In the hush of the operating theater, a boy’s pulse flat-lines; Carrington arrives just late enough for the scandal sheets to carve his name into medical infamy. Shattered scalpels, shredded reputation, he flees to a speck of volcanic green in the South Seas where chloroform cannot follow. A year later, Marion—now armored in pearls and a new suitor, the steel-belted financier Cyrus Carter—sets sail to certify Carrington’s rumored drowning. Poseidon, ever the ironist, detonates their yacht; Marion awakens barefoot on the very sand her former lover now calls kingdom. Over nights scented with ylang-ylang and guilt, the couple replay their crimes: she admits she murdered his future, he confesses he let her believe him dead. A monsoon of forgiveness drowns their pride; they return to New York, not redeemed but re-etched, bearing scars that glint like obsidian rings.
Synopsis
Spoiled Marion Ainsworth resents the fact that her fiancé, Dr. Paul Carrington, a young surgeon rising rapidly in his profession, devotes more time to his work than to her. Consequently, when an emergency call from the hospital threatens to disrupt their picnic, Marion intercepts the message, causing Carrington to be late for a critical operation, thus ruining his career. On the advice of his friend Dr. Matthews, Carrington breaks his engagement and voyages to a South Sea island where he intends to carry on his research. Carrington is reported lost at sea, and a year later, Marion and her new suitor, Cyrus Carter, undertake a cruise to verify the doctor's death. En route, their yacht explodes, and Marion is washed ashore on the island where Carrington is now living. After a series of misadventures, Carrington forgives her and the couple returns to civilization together.
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