chunk: However, when Stella Condon realizes the onset of old age and her vanishing beauty, she consents to a marriage of convenience with Feldt. From one day to the next Linda's itinerant life is replaced by life in a palace-like New York mansion together with her mother, Feldt and his two daughters. Already at the early age of 15 Linda experiences a "sense of looking on, as if morning, noon and night she were at another long play. [...] Probably it would continue without change through her entire life."
  Through Feldt's daughter Judith and her boyfriend Markue, Linda, not yet 18 years of age, is launched into New York society. At a party she meets Dodge Pleydon, a sculptor many years her senior who is fascinated by the young girl despite, or maybe because of, her frozen charm and subdued behaviour. Her first kiss, which she gets from Pleydon later that night, does not mean a lot to her, so she is hardly moved when he announces his intention to go abroad for an indefinite period of time.