Résumé

Harriet and David met each other at an office party neither had particularly wanted to go to, and both knew at once that this was that they had been waiting for. Someone conservative, old-fashioned, not to say obsolescent, timid, hard to please : this is what other people called them, but there was no end to the unaffectionate adjectives they earned. They defended a stubbornly held view of themselves, which was that they were ordinary and in the right of it, shoud not be criticized for emotional fastidousness, abstemiousness, just because these were unfashionable qualities.