Dead-Sea Fruit

A vanished lover on a lonely coast, a letter of wounded jealousy, and a trail of social reinvention set this novel's emotional machinery in motion. From the first panic over C.'s disappearance to the revelation that she has fled to E. in heartbreak, the story exposes a narrator whose romantic imagination is always at odds with real feeling. As H. pursues the truth, he finds Madame Carlitz transformed: she has abandoned the stage, sold her theatre lease, and is preparing to marry Lord V., a startling ascent that reinforces the book's fascination with performance, vanity, and social ambition. Another account of betrayal follows, in which a woman once thought merely flirtatious is revealed as a calculating seeker of status, prompting the narrator to end the affair, provide for her, and leave for South America. Yet freedom brings no peace; he concludes that marriage would only have made him "differently miserable," while Lady V. passes him by as a distant emblem of lost intimacy. Eustace Thorburn reads this history as a key to his own troubled origins. Haunted by the possibility that his mother's marriage was never secure, and by the shame of claiming Helen de Bergerac while uncertain of his name, he resolves to seek the truth in Scotland and to win literary distinction before daring to love. Around him, marriages fray and are tested: Laurence Jerningham forgives Emily, departs with quiet dignity, and still cannot fully extinguish hope; Eustace leaves Greenlands for Paris and for work, carrying with him both grief and the promise of art. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.