by Elizabeth Smart
Narrated by Maureen O'Brien

This classic story, first published in 1945, has been abridged for radio by the author. Described by some as 'a master-piece of poetic prose', it is about a woman's obsessive love for a married man. Unable to cope with her emotions, her sense of guilt, the endless waiting, she lives in a permanent state of anxiety and disquiet.

'Our seeming detachment grows. I sit back impersonally and say: I see human vanity. Or I feel myself full of gladness because there is gentleness between him and her. But he never passes anywhere near me without every drop of my blood springing to attention.
My mind may reason that the tenseness only registers neutrality, but my heart knows no true neutrality was ever so full of passion.'