Though sometimes, first love love cauterizes the heart, and all any searcher will find thereafter is scar tissue. [....] The question of responsibility? That seemed a matter for outsiders: only those with a sufficient lack of evidence and knowledge could confidently apportion blame.
A boy aged nineteen falls in love with a woman in her forties who is in a marriage with a man who is violent towards her. They leave, and build a new life together although she then falls into alcoholism. Unable or unwilling to stand by her, the young man leaves her for, he says, self-preservation. In old age, he looks back at life and love, and his relationship with the older woman who, even after he left, he never completely detached himself from.