A linked collection of short stories opens with a two-part frame narrative in which a traveling narrator explores a decayed riverside island, encounters long-lived local residents and a mysterious fortune-telling woman, and later participates in gatherings shaped by a reflective physician whose imaginative episodes occupy the second part. Other pieces move between philosophical sketches, ironic comedies, and intimate character studies of romantic mistakes and social manners, using evocative settings, quiet atmosphere, and psychological detail to probe loneliness, memory, and the small misjudgments that alter ordinary lives.