Part 4 Summary

Years later, established in New York with "successful" people who have professional or academic careers, Elizabeth attends dinner parties with various young, cosmopolitan people. Many of the party-goers are divorced, and Elizabeth thinks about the way people regard divorce, as another logical step in a marriage. For many of them, there is a trend of a young married couple buying an old house, renovating it, and having the children from a previous marriage come visit on the weekends, until the stress of mortgage payments causes the couple to split up.

At one party, Elizabeth finds herself talking with Judith, a woman who is very unhappy about her lot in life, but who regards her misfortune with a kind of cheerful resignation. Judith always says "of course," and "naturally," when she is telling about something bad in her life, as though nothing good can...