'You know, living with someone is like insider share dealing,' Judith said. 'One partner knows something that gives her an advantage; she thinks she can't go wrong. But she has misunderstood. She finds that her partner's emotional capital belongs to someone else. Like yours belongs to Mary Gilson.' James, thirty-two, is a geologist with a successful career, but he is struggling to make sense of his personal life. His partner, Mary, elegant, selfish, and deceitful, leaves him, suddenly, to marry his boyhood friend, Henry. James goes to work at a new mine in Australia, to get as far away as possible from her, and lays the foundation for his reputation as a practical man, not afraid to get his hands dirty. He returns to England, meets Henry by accident, and, despite misgivings, renews his friendship with Henry and Mary, wondering if he will see the wreckage of their marriage, but his life is changed by what he discovers. He meets Judith, clever, a sensual woman and a wonderful lover, and they live together, but James discovers that she is unfaithful, and they part. James wonders if he is attracted only to women who will be unfaithful, or are women unfaithful because of some fault in himself? He also wonders if it will take a miracle to give him a life with a woman he can trust, and he knows that miracles do not happen. Or do they?