An elderly narrator and his companion pass a sweltering afternoon in a fashionable resort park and register the scene: band music, mineral springs, a kiosk, and promenading visitors. His attention fixes on a beautiful young woman in white and on a middle-aged couple beside her, prompting reflections about age, social position and the possibility of a second marriage. Small episodes—a scolding mother and dirty child, timid deer and overfed trout—provide contrasts that sharpen the narrator’s pity, irony and speculative imagination. The piece unfolds as a series of close, observant vignettes about manners, class distinctions and the quiet tensions beneath resort society.