The Golden Bowl Part 1 Chapter 4

In which the arrival of a certain young lady compels a well-bred couple to engage in a delicate and curious examination of past romances and present relations, revealing the complexities of friendship, loyalty, and societal expectations. Through intimate discourse by the late hour, notions of love, honour, and the intertwining of families emerge with the quiet gravity and subtle contradictions that life, as Henry James might suggest, so often presents.