Individual Reading. Summary №1

The first-person narrator of the novel makes an acquaintance with the Stricklands. Mrs. Strickland is interested in art and literature and in the people who are connected to it. However her husband, a stockbroker, is a completely different person. He seems to the narrator to be a mediocre, boring and not art-oriented. However, one event makes the narrator change his opinion about Charles Strickland, for the latter suddenly leaves his wife and children and goes to Paris. Mrs. Strickland is convinced that Charles left her for a lover to spend his money in Paris on luxury hotels and restaurants, for after seventeen years of marriage he could not leave her without any possible explanations. Wanting to return Charles, the woman asks the narrator to go to Paris and try to return him into the family. Unable to refuse the grieving woman, the narrator agrees to help her and to disperse the doubts.