In a lonely house above Dartmouth Bay lives General Sir Hugh Weir: a solitary figure, austere to the point of vanity and as contemptuous of weakness in others as in himself. Behind him he has left a trail of broken lives âe" friends, lover, wife, son. Now two more people begin to feel the force of his restless compelling nature: Shirley Forsdike, a neurotic, hero-worshipping schoolmistress who has yet to meet him, and Frank Cauldwell, an impecunious young writer. Out of the shifting conflict raised by their emotions and experiences Francis King constructed a taut novel of passion and despair.