Prompted by an old diary, a 60-year-old man recalls an event from his Victorian youth that destroyed his beliefs and hopes for his future. Now, in 1952, he is forced to reinterpret his life in terms of these old memories of serving as go-between for a young woman and her lover. This first annotated edition of L. P. Hartley's 1953 classic contains a number of corrections based on the surviving handwritten manuscript. 336 pp.