The story becomes a complex "double fiction" through which we experience both Cam's struggles and triumphs and the dominant story of Jane Reid. Jane was born a Boston Brahmin, granddaughter of a legendary man of letters. Tall, beautiful, wealthy, she was pursued by men but was the intimate of women. Just out of Vassar, she went to France to work in an orphange for World War 1 victims, and forty years later to Germany with the Unitarian Service Committee. In intervening years, she was a much beloved teacher.