Like many a man who has married early, Philip Fleming felt that he had been cheated of the delights that his bachelor friends boasted of, that his married friends took with guilty pleasure. Cheated because, after a decade of marriage, with money and stature as a studio writer, and an endless galaxy of desirable women available to him, he had never once been unfaithful to his wife. Philip told himself the dangers were too great, the involvement too complete. He did not tell himself that he was afraid.

Then one afternoon Peggy Degen, a young widow, walked into his living room. Philip took one look at her green-eyed, feline beauty, all promise and sensuality, and for the first time knew the consuming, not-to-be-denied need to be with a woman other than his wife.

Peggy, he soon found, was willing to give herself freely—not because she was wanton, but as the spontaneous expression of her genuine, outgoing love. But when Philip went to her, the inconceivable—the outrageous—the unendurable—happened.

Philip saw that if he ran from Peggy, there would be no stopping, ever. What had begun as a glamorous extramarital romance, in less than a week became a dark, headlong obsession, threatening him with total impotence as a human being...