The dust has cleared from the 1911 revolution and the capital of China has moved south to Nanking. Peking's diplomatic set - now all but irrelevant - languish in an exotic world suspended somewhere between East and West, between propriety and decadence. Against this backdrop, Jean Maugrais finds himself the target of two married women's affections. But he longs for something more than the endless frivolities of the "smart set" and yearns to be more than a silhouette, an outsider skimming on the surface of a great civilization he doesn't fully understand.