This novella of less than 200 large print pages is an intense experience. Written at the close of the First World War, it epitomizes class relationships and the situation of women at the time. These relationships are demonstrated in the women's reactions to each other and to the soldier of the title who returns with amnesia from shell-shock, remembering only his first love, Margaret, now a working-class married woman and not his elegant, high-class wife. Narrated by the soldier's cousin, Jenny, the perspective is that of the upper class, although also of someone with genuine feeling, perhaps love for the soldier, Chris. Speaking of Margaret at their first meeting, she writes: "I...hated her as the rich hate the poor, as insect things that will struggle out of crannies which are their decent home, and introduce ugliness to the light of day."

The story relates how the three women deal with Chris' homecoming when all he wants to do is spend time with Margaret whom he still adores, having no recollection of events since their farewell fifteen years earlier. The elegant lifestyle of Kitty and her marriage is shown to be a facade with Margaret the one who truly cares for Chris to the extent of understanding how a "cure" can be effected and thereby sacrificing her own happiness with him. Rebecca West ably contrasts appearances and reality much to the detriment of the upper class, although perhaps Margaret is almost too good to be true. Surprisingly, as he is the focus of the novella, we never receive any direct information about Chris' own feelings, which underlines the priority given by the female author to the emotions and actions of the women in this story.