And Conrad’s response confirmed it more completely than any confession could have.

A man whose wife has just been assaulted has exactly one acceptable first move, and it is to go to his wife.

Conrad went to his mistress.

He turned his back on the bleeding woman and directed his concern at the one holding the shears, and in that single choice of direction he told me, more clearly than fifteen years of words, which of us he considered his.

I did not need to hear another thing.

The marriage did not end when I found her behind his desk, or even when she raised the shears.