The girl he had come across ... that human bein so near and still so strange, gave him a greater sense of his own reality than he had ever known in all his life.
Axel Heyst has withdrawn from the world to live in near isolation on the island of Samburan, one of the islands of Indonesia. On a rare trip away, he encounters a young English woman performing with a travelling band. He rescues her from her preying patron, Mr Schomberg, and they flee to Heyst's private paradise. But Schomberg is determ...