The Reef

On a windy pier at Dover, a young diplomat named George Darrow stood reading a telegram for the second time, as if reading it again might change the words.The telegram was from Anna Leath, a widow he had loved years before and had only recently found again: "Unexpected obstacle. Please don't come till the thirtieth."Darrow had rearranged his whole schedule to cross to France and see her, and this was already the second time she had put him off with a vague excuse.

They had met again three months earlier, at a dinner in London, after twelve years of silence between them, and for a while it had seemed the old feeling was still there.Now, standing alone with his ticket to France in his pocket, Darrow wondered whether to cross the Channel anyway or simply turn back to London.While he stood turning the question over, a sudden gust of wind tore an umbrella inside out a few steps away from him.

Its owner was a young woman fighting to close the broken umbrella, and Darrow stepped over to help her before he had even decided to.When she thanked him and looked up, he recognized her face: Sophy Viner, who had once worked as a "reader" for a society hostess named Mrs. Murrett.Darrow remembered the house well, since he himself had once spent an unhappy season there, courting a woman named Lady Ulrica.

Sophy explained, a little too quickly, that she had left Mrs. Murrett's house after a disagreement and was now on her way to Paris to try her luck at acting.As they talked, it became clear that Sophy's trip was not going smoothly at all: her trunk had somehow been lost, and the friends she planned to stay with in Paris, the Farlows, had just moved without telling her their new address.She tried to sound light and confident about it, but Darrow could see she was more alone and worried than she wanted to admit.

He thought of the empty evening ahead of him in London, and of Anna's cold little telegram sitting in his pocket.Almost before he had decided anything, Darrow heard himself offering to help Sophy find her trunk and see her safely to Paris.Sophy protested that she couldn't possibly let him go out of his way for a near stranger, but she did not protest very hard.

"It's no trouble at all," Darrow said. "I was only going to sit in London feeling sorry for myself."So instead of turning back toward London and his own disappointment, Darrow bought a second ticket and boarded the boat to France with Sophy Viner at his side.Neither of them yet guessed how much that one impulsive choice, made on a windy pier, would change both of their lives.