If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name: Charles Ryder. For the rest, my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be. On second thoughts, one emotion remains my own. Alone among the borrowed and the secondhand, as pure as that faith from which I am still in flight. . . guilt.