Content Warning: This section of the guide refers to scenes involving suicidal ideation and sexual harassment.

Twenty-three-year-old Denis Stone is on a train traveling through the English countryside. As he collects his personal items, he thinks about all the villages through which the train passes as it moves closer to his stop, Camlet. Reflecting on his two-hour journey, he feels nostalgic and depressed and wishes he could have spent that time writing instead.

The train stops at Camlet, and Denis jumps off with his luggage. Imagining himself “a man of action,” he yells to the platform guard to bring him his bicycle (3). The man chides him, and Denis, feeling defeated, takes his bicycle and leaves the luggage to be collected later. He rides up the hill away from the station, gradually feeling better as he looks over the verdant landscape. He thinks of the word “curves” as he looks over the hills and compares the countryside to a human body (3). He then ponders the French word galbe, meaning curved, and thinks about all the French words he would include in a dictionary designed for novelists. He arrives at Crome, a country house with three towers and a garden full of dark, imposing trees.