Shortly after turning forty, David Smith, a prosperous wine merchant happily established on Park Avenue with his wife and four children, embarks on a series of love affairs that gather in intensity and impact. As the implications of David's actions accumulate, the lives of all around him are irrevocably changed. Not least among the novel's accomplishments is its sympathetic picture of David's women: Barbara, his wife of fifteen years; Anne, elegant, removed - and badly in need of love; and Helene, a French countess in her mid-thirties lost in Manhattan.