On holiday at a fashionable German spa, young civil engineer Herr von Gordon meets Colonel von St Arnaud and his younger wife, the beautiful Cecile. Gordon is drawn to this elegant and melancholy woman, who seems to hold herself at a distance from her husband. As he and the married pair tour local attractions and enjoy the scenery of the Harz Mountains, he finds himself ever more fascinated by Cecile - and by the mystery surrounding her past.
As Gordon and Cecile grow closer, her husband's jealousy, the gossip of polite society, and the secrets of the past converge. When they meet again in Berlin society, the attraction between the two young people will have tragic consequences for all.
A challenge to societal conventions, a portrait of a complex woman and a biting send-up of early tourist culture, Fontane's novel is an elegant, ironic and moving classic of 19th-century realist fiction.
