The world of the English Young Ladies of Miss Pelham's finishing school was a world of decorum, a neat, beautifully mannered, well-ordered world. But in the France of 1949, the world of the Jewish orphan boys at the Hostel was a world of war, violence, sadism, the unspeakable deprivations and degradations of the concentration camp. Between the heads of the two establishments, there was a tacit agreement that the inmates should not meet. Yet chance of fate made one exception. Deirdre met Max. Max was older by an age of suffering than lovely, unawakened Deirdre.