Edward Hayes is a lonely widower. Albertine Sinclair, who is single and 38, is writing a doctoral thesis on Stendhal. They get to know each other by sight at the library where they work and start to feel an attraction for each other but both are too shy to make a first move.Albertine's friend Tabitha thinks up an original way to bring them together and when she has set it in motion she lets Albertine into the secret. Tabitha leads Edward through a series of three meetings with Albertine on each of which he sends a report back to Tabitha who, unknown to Edward, sends it on to Albertine. Little by little, Edward and Albertine feel more at ease with each other, discover mutual interests and sympathies to the point where, independently, they both feel sufficiently self confident to carry on without Tabitha´s help.Their romance begins to blossom but neither of them can foresee a crisis that is waiting to happen and threatens to destroy their relationship completely.