"How Vainly Men Themselves Amaze."

An eighteen-year-old on holiday with his parents is both plaything of a seductive married woman and admirer of her nanny, a lovely girl his own age.

The title comes from the first line of the poem "The Garden" by Andrew Marvell. Another work of Bates's later years, "The Simple Life," features a similar relationship.

In Woman's Own (March 12, 1966, with the title "Sands of Time"), The Wild Cherry Tree (1968), H.E. Bates (1975).