The Glimpses of the Moon

Susy Branch and Nick Lansing belong to wealthy social circles without possessing wealth of their own. Beauty, charm, and careful usefulness earn them invitations, travel, and temporary luxury, but every comfort depends on richer friends. Falling in love threatens the practical arrangements by which each has remained afloat.

Their solution is a deliberately provisional marriage. Wedding gifts and borrowed houses will finance a year together; if either finds a more advantageous partner, the other promises to grant a divorce. The bargain treats affection as one more resource to manage and assumes that emotional commitments can be controlled as neatly as a social calendar.

Edith Wharton follows the strain that appears when Susy and Nick's cynical plan encounters genuine attachment. Favors accepted from friends carry moral costs, and opportunities for separate security test what each person is willing to conceal or surrender. The Glimpses of the Moon uses elegant settings and social comedy to examine dependence beneath privilege. Its central question is not whether the couple can enjoy luxury, but whether love can survive habits formed in a world where hospitality, marriage, and loyalty are continually exchanged for access.