An antique dealer is asked to dispose of an enormous collection, portioning it among the relatives and friends.Translated from the French by Barbara Lucas.

    Mr. Windham's stories are uncluttered. His narratives read as unobtrusively as Roald Dahl's. Yet the themes are the most significant of all -- communication, love, and compassion."Paulo", a poignant and superbly flawless story, is the story of an Italian-American boy, who marries a Protestant girl, and his abortive attempt to Americanize himself completely. He speaks only English; tragedy sends him back to his mother's house."Single Harvest" is a skillfully drawn tale of money coming between friends and in "The Third Bridge" Windham proves that decadence can be described without treading the usual biological paths.Two stories here, "The Warm Country" and "Servants with Torches" treat homosexuality both openly and as a subtext. His characters are feckless or desperate or both, caught in prisons of their own masking, but "The Starless Air" transcends its unpromising material to become a worthy American equivalent of James Joyce's early masterpiece "The Dead".Throughout the only obstacle course which Mr. Windham has his creations run is the least tortuous but most difficult natural gap between two functioning organisms.