Note: - First published in magazine, Good Housekeeping, March 1946. - Reprinted in Creatures of Circumstance (1947), Maugham's last short story collection. - Reprinted in The Complete Short Stories (1951, Heinemann, 3 vols.). - Also reprinted in Quartet (1948), together with a screenplay based on it (but not written by Maugham). - Source for all above: Raymond Toole Stott: Bibliography of the Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Second Revised Edition, 1973).

Synopsis: The Colonel completely discounts his childless wife Evie until he finds, upon reading a book of passionate poems that she's published to critical acclaim, that ten years earlier she had an affair with a younger man. He's left wondering why he never caught on until now and why he never sees the passionate and attractive side of his wife.