She had not wanted gratitude, exactly, or even acknowledgment.

She had only, foolishly, hoped that they might treat her with basic kindness during the years they believed she had nothing to give — that their decency, if she ever saw it, would be real, offered to a woman they thought was powerless.

That night, over a broken crystal bowl and a kiss beside a limousine, they had given her their final answer.

What made it sharpest was a memory from very early in the marriage, before the coldness set in.

Lenette had been complaining, at a dinner, about a friend whose son had married “beneath himself” — a girl with no family, no money, nothing to bring to the table.

And Lucius, young and still in love, had laughed and squeezed Isadora’s hand under the table and said, warmly, that money was the least interesting thing a person could offer.