Flory, a middle-aged Englishman, has grown soft in the foreign service. He is not ready for love, though it takes him when he meets Elizabeth Lackerstein. She is a beautiful English girl, recently orphaned, and her need for a protector undoes him.

"This is a superior novel, not less so because it tells an absorbing story. Orwell has made his people and his background vividly real. And he knows of what he writes." (The New York Times)