Summary
In a Manhattan that still smells of fresh paint and coal smoke, carefree clubman Roddy Forrester—equal parts silk waistcoats and unspoken panic—wagers that courtship can remain a bloodless sport. His creed: every debutante a toy, every moonlit balcony a trap to dodge. Enter Marjorie Meredith, portraitist of blossoming socialite reputations, whose brush captures not only cheekbones but the tremor of a soul sick of masquerade. Their first collision is a hothouse soirée where she sketches him mid-quip; the charcoal line slips, slicing his complacency. What follows is a fugue of electric strolls through Central Park’s nascent electric lights, of tear-blurred letters slid under hotel doors, of a Tiffany engagement ring deliberately left in a hansom’s folds. Roddy’s bachelor oath mutates into a choking jealousy when Marjorie accepts a voyage-bound proposal from the steel-heir rival, Reginald K. Storm, whose gifts are as lavish as his silences are cruel. On the eve of the maiden’s Atlantic crossing, Roddy storms a fog-draped pier, only to watch the gangway lift like a guillotine. Months dissolve; postcards from Capri arrive, inked with Marjorie’s growing dread. Roddy, meanwhile, haunts rooftop gardens where gramophones wheeze out Verdi; he learns that absence is a more ruthless sculptor than any chisel. A scandal rag prints Marjorie’s jilted return: Storm wedded another for a trust-fund clause. Society’s whispers become steel wool on her skin. Roddy finds her in the same conservatory where they once traded barbs over champagne coupes; moonlight stripes her mourning dress like prison bars. He does not propose—he confesses that solitude tastes of copper when shared. Fade-out on two silhouettes boarding the night train to California, destination unspoken, passports blank: marriage as horizon rather than cage.
