W. Somerset W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Kitty Fane is a beautiful, vain, upper-class British woman unhappily married to Walter Fane, a bacteriologist working in Hong Kong. She is conducting an affair with Charles Townsend, the Assistant Colonial Secretary, and the two are in her room when the knobs to her door mysteriously turn from the outside. She worries that her husband may have discovered her affair, but then she recalls their loveless match. She married Walter after several years of unsuccessfully seeking a match who would win her mother's approval; eventually, her homely younger sister Doris was about to be married, and Kitty hastily accepted Walter's proposal of marriage so that she would not be single at her little sister's wedding. The outgoing Kitty and the reserved Walter make a horrible match. Walter is silent and pale for several days, and then gives Kitty an ultimatum. She will accompany him on his expedition to fight a cholera epidemic in Mei-tan-fu, a city in southern China, or he will bring her to court for her infidelity. Kitty is horrified, and certain that the cholera epidemic will mean her death. Walter gives her another out: if Charles agrees to marry her, he will allow her to divorce him and she can stay in Hong Kong. Kitty, delighted that she will finally get the chance to be with her beloved Charles, immediately confronts her lover with this proposal. Charles refuses to divorce his wife Dorothy, and Kitty, heartbroken, agrees to go with Walter to Mei-tan-fu.

(Annotated Edition)

The Painted Veil

you couldn't help being conscious of the devastating passion which was in his heart.

she had felt an aloofness which oppressed her. They were friendly and even cordial, but at the same time they held something back, she knew not what, so that she was conscious that she was nothing but a casual stranger. There was a barrier between her and them. They spoke a different language not only of the tongue but of the heart.

She rose and with the easy dignity which her voluminous habit could not conceal left the room.

Like a rich melody on a harp that rang in exultant arpeggios through the complicated harmonies of a symphony, one thought beat in her heart insistently.

The Painted Veil quotes

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