A Theme for Reason

For nine years Shane Mannering had been the center of her existence - all the lover, all the friend Alix had ever dreamed of. In a way she and Shane lived for their summers - the summers they spent on Tiree, their island home off the Maine coast, where every year three months together almost compensated them for the winter, when their two worlds had to be kept apart. But now, suddenly, with the promise of another summer close at hand, Shane was dead; and when she at last had made herself believe it, Alix saw clearly that her very reason for being was gone. So, she resolved, she would finish the children's portraits she'd been commissioned to paint, and then she would go to Tiree, put the house in order, and quietly end her own life. It was the logical solution, not even frightening to contemplate.

But Tiree that summer confronted Alix with the unexpected. At first too absorbed in her somber plans to realize what was happening, she was drawn unavoidably into abrasive contact with two other people - a man and a young girl - who had also decided that their lives had become pointless. Instinctively Alix set about persuading them that they had every reason to live, and one day found that in spite of everything she was persuading herself...