At their next meeting, the woman freely reveals her "identity" and two others in their circle, one a cabinet minister (Charles Gurnard) and Fox, the editor of a new paper – all of them competing with each other.

The authors introduce the story via science fiction tropes such as the uncanny – coincidences, ESP, unearthly lighting effects, distorted visions, supernatural aural frequencies and scenes dissolving into another – pointing to the underlying threat of instability that drives the novel.

Although Arthur at first holds to high ideals (he values "literature" over journalism, sacrificial literary types over opportunists), he gradually moves away from them because he wants to be a somebody.

She accurately chooses him for his weaknesses: his sense of failure and impotence as a writer with a need for significance; his isolation and willingness to join society; his snobbery and openness to flattering attention.

The story is a Machiavellian labyrinth involving the British Government's tenuous support for a railway baron, a bid to annex Greenland, and a tilt at party leadership.

Themes of unrealised potential, the cold-blooded manoeuvering, and the upward climb of the influential mystery woman, fictionalise the intricacies and interactions of class and power in Britain at the time.

By chance Arthur is offered a job writing "atmospheric" pieces for a new journal put together by an editor (Fox), a well-respected writer (Callan) and the Foreign Minister (Edward Churchill).

Themes of universality and the corruptibility of human nature, loneliness, isolation, self-deception, and the outworkings of a character's flaws are signatures found throughout most of Joseph Conrad's writings.