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A landowner confides his fear that ordinary life is incomprehensible, unaware that his closest friend desires his wife.
Unable to sleep in a provincial chemist’s shop, a lonely young wife welcomes two officers whose late-night errand becomes open flirtation.
A seven-year-old watches the household arrange its cook’s marriage and struggles to understand why a stranger can claim authority over her.
On Easter morning, a newly married farmer passes a sick soldier on the road and cannot quiet his conscience afterward.
A society hostess dazzled by artistic celebrity overlooks the quiet distinction of the doctor she has married.
A sick doctor finds a telegram that confirms his wife’s affair and tries to release them both from a ruined marriage.
A laboring woman meets the husband who rarely comes home and asks him to stay, if only for a day.
A practiced seducer meets a married woman at a seaside resort and discovers that their affair has become more serious than either expected.
On New Year’s Eve, a young woman peers into a mirror for a glimpse of marriage and sees far more of its demands than she expected.
A possible lottery win gives a comfortable couple a sudden view of riches—and of each other.
A pregnant hostess endures a long name-day party while resentment, jealousy, and fatigue expose the strain in her marriage.
A young teacher wins the domestic happiness he imagined, only to find contentment raising questions about the life he has chosen.
A jealous sexton blames his wife for every storm that sends a young traveler to their isolated hut.
After saving a child from a Venetian canal, a mysterious man keeps a final appointment with the child's married mother.
A young couple uses two sailors' conflicting dates to satisfy an uncle's impossible demand that three Sundays fall in one week.
On a train to Paris, a proudly controlling mother carries a caged bird home while unknowingly passing the wreckage of her daughter’s love.
After the thaw, a peasant brings his wife’s body down from the mountains—and the villagers reveal the grotesque ritual he performed while waiting.
In a rainy Italian hotel, an American wife goes after a stray cat and discovers how many other things she wants.
A young Harvard poet and his older bride cross the Atlantic determined to begin a perfect marriage, but Europe has other distractions.
A wounded lieutenant keeps vigil against sleep, replaying memory, prayer, and imagined trout streams to hold his soul together after the war.
A young couple follows a drunken local guide out of Cortina for an illegal trout-fishing trip that keeps slipping further out of reach.
A daring flirt makes her persistent admirer earn his chance during a wild-boar hunt at a Norman château.
A Parisian family’s summer outing opens a brief, charged interval between ordinary life and a happiness that cannot last.
A self-styled naïve bachelor warns husbands after a lover's drunken confession unsettles his ideas about courtship.
