Summary

Chapter 1 of the story opens in a home somewhere in New York City. Mr. Waythorn is an investment manager and is in his late thirties. He is newly married to Alice, a woman in her mid-thirties. Alice has been married twice before, and she has a daughter from her first marriage. The daughter, Lily, is 12 years old and has recently contracted typhoid. The symptoms are minor, and the attending doctor is optimistic that Lily will make a full recovery. Waythorn is a polite but somewhat brooding man. He loves Alice very much, and her presence always makes him happy. Waythorn knows little of Lily’s previous marriages, except that she married her first husband—Mr. Haskett—when she was only 17 years old. Her second husband was a man named Gus Varick. The story subtly implies that, according to rumors, Varick might have been sexually...