I first became interested in this story and its author when I watched Max Ophuls's excellent 1940's film adaptation of it starring Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan.
It's the story of a young woman who falls in love at age 13 with a well known 25 year old writer who lives in her building. She idolizes him to the extent that he becomes the sole focus of her life, but he barely even notices her and is known to bring home a series of different women to spend the night. Once she is grown up enough to attract him, they have a few encounters together resulting in a child, but he doesn't remember her after any significant absence. Not wanting to be a burden to him she never tells him about the child and basically sacrifices her entire life to her quiet obsession with him.
It's a very mysterious little story as it is told entirely from her point of view (he is reading a letter she wrote him that was delivered after her death) and there is something a bit surrealistic about the premise that the man just can't remember her even after their affair. Although to be fair, she never tells him her name and falls in with his desires just like anyone else in the long string of women he takes home, so why would he remember her?
The story can be read as a warning about the dangers of idolizing unworthy things, and also about what a lot a person can miss when they go through life being too self centered and not seeing others for the fellow human beings they are.
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