'I knew that Clea would share everything with me, withholding nothing—not even the look of complicity which women reserve only for their mirrors.'

In Clea, the concluding part of The Alexandria Quartet, Darley returns to Alexandria now caught by war-fever. The conflagration has its effect on his circle—on Nessim and Justine, Balthazar and Clea, Mountolive and Pombal—and a clarity of purpose emerges as the story moves towards its cadence.