Mrs Midas narrates a late‑September evening in her kitchen, where she pours wine and prepares a meal while a mysterious gold‑fixated man stands beneath a pear tree, plucking golden fruit. He enters the house, draws the blinds, and sits like a king, his demeanor wild and vain. She serves him corn on the cob; he obsessively toys with utensils and demands wine, which she gives—a dry white from Italy. After drinking, he collapses, and she screams. She restrains him, locks the cat in the cellar, and moves the phone, noting his strange wish for gold. He attempts to light a cigarette, which she watches. Their relationship becomes passionate but threatening, and she dreams of bearing his child with limbs of ore and amber eyes. The next morning, she decides he must leave. She drives him away in a caravan hidden in the dark, leaving him in the back. She returns home alone, reflecting on the marriage to “the fool who wished for gold.” She describes visiting his home, seeing golden trout on the grass, a hare hanging from a larch, and his thin, delirious footprints beside a river, where he claims to hear Pan’s music. She concludes that his greed and selfishness drove her to sell her house’s contents, move away, and mourn his warm hands despite the pain.