Alain and Camille, childhood friends, marry with the approval of their families. Alain is satisfied with the union, whose main attraction lies in the idealized beauty of the prudent and passive wife. But life together with the real Camille will reveal to him that the image he had of her inevitably contrasts with her real exuberance. The discovery of this intimate disagreement will leave him at the mercy of other desires, symbolized by the cat Saha, a sublime chimera who will dominate Alain's life and become a fearsome rival for Camille... A novel as subtle as it is mordant in which Colette subverts the clichés of the love triangle to explore the constraints of devotion and the conflict between fantasy and experience.