I can’t say that this is the best novel I’ve ever read, but I was really touched by this perfect, however unreachable love…it reached the most sentimental and delicate part in my deep heart.

There’s this scene in the novel that has been burnt into my mind… Archer visits an old lady with his fiancé. The lady also calls for Ellen (Ellen and Archer fall into love with each other, but Archer will marry his fiancé). When Ellen doesn’t appear, that lady sends Archer down to the shore to find her. Half way down the bank, he sees her standing at the end of the pier. She doesn’t turn around, she just continues to gaze at the bay and the boats. Archer, as he looks at her, remembers a scene in a drama in which the man kisses the woman's hair-ribbon without her knowing that he is there. He wonders if Ellen knows that he is watching her. He decides that if she doesn't turn around before a passing sailboat crosses the lighthouse, he will go back without speaking to her. In the end he just stands and watches her; she doesn’t turn around. But she KNOWS.

25 years after, his son visits her in Paris. He goes to Paris with his son, but he doesn’t go up, he just stands on the street and looks at her window. Then he turns around.

I was so touched by their struggling for love while being bounded to the social code.