Inspired by an unspoken passion, a narrator writes some pages, comprising the story of the beginning, the blossoming, and finally the ending of a young woman's most intense love affair.

An unformed, innocent student in her first semester at university, Flannery Jansen initally encounters her lover in a local diner. But her tentative overtures - a look, a blush - are dismissed and Flannery retreats, humiliated. Future chance meetings discourage Flannery even more, for Anne Arden is sophisticated and poised; in Flannery's eyes almost impossibly beautiful. Until one day, she realizes that Anne feels the same way about her...