The book begins with a quotation from Henry James, "Never say you know the last word about any human heart." A short preface (an anonymous editor suggests it was written in 1987) explains that the earliest pages have been lost, and recounts briefly Mountstuart's childhood in Montevideo, Uruguay, before he moves to England aged seven with his English father and Uruguayan mother. In his final term at school he and two friends set challenges. Logan is to get on to the school's first XV rugby team; Peter Scabius has to seduce Tess, a local farmer's daughter; and Ben Leeping, a lapsed Jew, has to convert to Roman Catholicism. Mountstuart enters Oxford on an exhibition and leaves with a third in History. Settling in London, he enjoys early success as a writer with "The Mind's Imaginings", a critically successful biography of Shelley; "The Girl Factory", a salacious novel about prostitutes (which is poorly reviewed but sells well); and "Les Cosmopolites", a respectable book on some obscure French poets. Mountstuart's mother loses the family wealth in the Wall Street Crash. He embarks on a series of amorous encounters: he loses his virginity to Tess, is rejected by Land Fothergill whom he met at Oxford, and marries Lottie, an Earl's daughter. They live together at Thorpe Hall in Norfolk, where Mountstuart, unstimulated by slow country life and his warm but dull wife, becomes idle.