At the beginning of this short novel Cain's narrator works cleaning an unnamed museum, and struggles, as she does throughout the book, to find the balance in her life that will allow her to write. During her time as a cleaner the lack of money, frustration with her work, and the lack of time constrain her. Later she finds that being a woman or a writer are both made difficult by those around her and that being both is doubly so.
She and her coworker at the museum, Antoinette, talk as they go about their day and sometimes after, Antoinette talks about wanting a better life, a husband, and pretty things. The narrator answers her, but seldom reveals much of anything about herself. When the narrator suddenly marries a wealthy man who has seen at the museum, she doesn't even say good bye to Antoinette. Marriage in this time (candles and carriages) and place (somewhere with a museum and ballet) brings about its own constraints, though, and the narrator hatches a strange plan to free herself from them.
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