When Marya Zelli`s husband, Stephan, a Polish art smuggler, is arrested, Marya moves in with Heidler, a middle-aged and seemingly respectable art dealer whose wife encourages him to pursue other women--as a form of sexual control over him. When Stephan is released from prison and finds out about the affair, he rejects Marya, as does Heidler, who returns to his wife. As in so many of Rhys`s novels, Quartet is about a woman of sensitivity and imagination who is destroyed by a cold world. This is her first published novel, and it is based on her affair with Ford Madox Ford, who also appears as the eponymous, self-satisfied hypocrite in AFTER LEAVING MR. MACKENZIE. (Each member of the real-life quartet wrote a novel about it.)