I have a second edition as well. And it IS Kathe!

Here goes: Alan is an art-nerd. He doesn’t love human beings much, or at all. That’s why his love of porcelain, music, etc. is such an important element in this story; these traits indicate that he isn’t moved by the usual human emotional ties. His attitude towards most women is apparent in the way he rejects girls like the Danish Kirsten who assists in the Greek plays he attends (too plain), and the English rose Barbara (too demanding). It also shows in the his dismissal of the girls whose clothes he admires but whose wearers are too vulgar or ordinary to satisfy his fastidious tastes.

But then on a trip to Cophenhagen, he meets Kathe, a beautiful young woman who evokes in him a series of allegorical images in response – panther, Persian cat, Aphrodite, etc. However, he doesn’t take the trouble to know her well, or at all. He ignores all the warning signals he gets from her in their various encounters. In fact, his ability to dismiss her hints about her previous life is almost comical. On one of their evenings out in Copenhagen, he is ludicrously deaf/blind to her evasions. From these things – Alan’s wish to make Kathe into a non-human goddess, and his tendency to ignore her hints – their tragedy develops.

Kathe, although Alan may see her as a goddess in his psychic visions, is only human, a fact which he refuses to accept. She is not a piece of porcelain; she does not represent a Greek goddess figure, however sexually skilled she might be. (Did she acquire this skill, perhaps, from working as a prostitute? Adams doesn’t quite say, but he hints it.) She is a real woman with a history that Alan the fastidious might find distasteful, which is why she does not try to tell him about it.

Alan understands none of this. He continues to think of his new wife as a goddess/princess, too good for him. He refuses to let her tell him about herself, and admits that this is only out of jealousy; he doesn’t WANT to know her life story. But if he doesn’t understand it, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know. His “psychic gift” is just powerful enough to tell him things he doesn’t want to know. And so the story winds towards its denouement.

The Christianity in the story is important in that Alan is only acquainted with a very anodyne version of it, through his friend Tony. He realises, as he tries to defend his wife, that Tony’s “liberal” Christianity, which only forgives sins that it doesn’t think are real sins, can’t find a way to forgive the sins of a woman who has actually done something really wrong, even if her reasons for doing so were understandable. Tony can’t help; only “I am the Resurrection and the Life” Christianity is able to heal Alan.