She had known the truth about her husband for the last forty-eight hours. Before that, it had only been a dim, glimmering suspicion, so incredible that she had tried to brush it aside. It had begun a few months ago, when she had gone to a play in Manhattan and had come home unexpectedly early because the star was drunk and the curtain had been rung down in the middle of the second act. Anthony had told her that he was having a business meeting at the house, but that it would be over before she returned. When she had arrived, the meeting was still going on. And before her surprised hus band had been able to close the library door, she had heard someone angrily shouting, “I vote that we hit the factory to night and take care of the bastards once and for all!” The phrase, the ruthless appearance of the strangers in the room, and Anthony’s agitation at seeing her had combined to un nerve Anne. She had let his glib explanations convince her because she had wanted desperately to be convinced. In the six months of their marriage, he had been a tender, considerate husband. She had seen occasional flashes of a violent temper, but he had always quickly managed to gain control of him self.
A few weeks after the theater incident, she had picked up a telephone and had overheard Anthony’s voice on an exten sion phone. “We’re taking over a shipment from Toronto tonight. You’ll have to have someone handle the guard. He’s not with us.”
She had hung up, shaken. “Take over a shipment”…“handle the guard”…They sounded ominous, but they could have been innocent business phrases. Carefully, casually, she tried to question Anthony about his business activities. It was as though a steel wall went up. She was confronted by an angry stranger who told her to take care of his home and keep out of his business. They had quarreled bitterly, and the next evening he had given her an outrageously expensive necklace and tenderly apologized.
A month later, the third incident had occurred. Anne had been awakened at four o’clock in the morning by the slam ming of a door. She had slipped into a negligee and gone downstairs to investigate. She heard voices coming from the library, raised in argument. She went toward the door, but stopped as she saw Anthony in the room talking to half a dozen strangers. Afraid that he would be angry if she inter rupted, she quietly went back upstairs and returned to bed. At breakfast the next morning, she asked him how he had slept.
“Great. I fell off at ten o’clock and never opened my eyes once.”
And Anne knew that she was in trouble. She had no idea what kind of trouble or how serious it was. All she knew was that her husband had lied to her for reasons that she could not fathom. What kind of business could he be involved in that had to be conducted secretly in the middle of the night with men who looked like hoodlums? She was afraid to broach the subject again with Anthony. A panic began to build in her. There was no one with whom she could talk.
A few nights later, at a dinner party at the country club to which they belonged, someone had mentioned a psychoana lyst named Judd Stevens, and talked about how brilliant he was.
“He’s a kind of analyst’s analyst, if you know what I mean. He’s terribly attractive, but it’s wasted—he’s one of those dedicated types.”
Anne had carefully noted the name and the following week had gone to see him.
The first meeting with Judd had turned her life topsy turvy. She had felt herself drawn into an emotional vortex that had left her shaken. In her confusion, she had been scarcely able to talk to him, and she had left feeling like a school girl, promising herself that she would not go back. But she had gone back to prove to herself that what had happened was a fluke, an accident. Her reaction the second time was even stronger. She had always prided herself on being sensible and realistic, and now she was acting like a seven teen-year-old girl in love for the first time. She found herself unable to discuss her husband with Judd, and so they had talked about other things, and after each session Anne found herself more in love with this warm, sensitive stranger.