Aristide Michal's wife Lotte is not his wife, nor is his son Philippe his son. He is deeply attached to both, and to the modest little Hotel Moderne Aristide he is running in a village in the hills behind Nice and Cannes, with its admirable small restaurant, and its faithful café circle which includes an old Englishman with his own reasons for anger and pity. What happens to Michal himself, to Lotte and Philippe, to the old Englishman, and to the boy Jean in the months before he comes to accept his divided loyalty, forms plot and theme of a work of imagination told with consummate narrative skills.