On a visit with friends to a grand country house near London, a man sees a woman whom he recognizes from his past. At first he is unable to place her, but when they finally have an opportunity to talk, May Bartram reminds John Marcher that they met in Naples ten years earlier, through friends they held in common. Disappointed by the apparent meagreness of this shared history, and feeling that it has little to offer their present reunion, Marcher is about to take a reluctant leave of Miss Bartram when she reveals that in Italy he told her something that she has never forgotten and that has often caused her to think of him in the intervening years: “You said you had had from your earliest time, as the deepest thing within you, the sense of being kept for something rare and strange,…
1815 words
Citation: Chilton, Neil. "The Beast in the Jungle". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 November 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=20114, accessed 21 November 2024.]
