This moving story is recounted by Margaret, the daughter of a Yorshire miner, who falls in love with a married teacher & goes to live with him in a room in Camden Town, London. Many critics have observed & almost lawrentian fidelity in the descriptions of their love-making & the intricacies of their emotional responses to one another. But in the end family ties prove too strong for an ambiguous relationship which begins to disclose a chasm of emptiness & bitterness.