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connection with some tricky operation on a minor celebrity. By now the prophets of doom were having to eat their words: they had to admit that a man isn’t likely to achieve success like this if he is all the time wresting with an unhappy marriage. In some inexplicable way, drab little Nurse Harris must have been right for him. But why?
    Milly, of course, knew why. She had known all along, but had had no intention of allowing the knowledge to mar her joy and excitement over her extraordinary good fortune. She had known right from the start that what Julian wanted—nay, needed —was a wife who would serve as a foil for his own brilliance. A woman so retiring, so inconspicuous, that in contrast to her dullness his own wit, his own charm, would shine out with redoubled radiance. A woman who never, ever, in any circumstances , would draw attention away from him and on to herself.
    And for a while—indeed for a number of years—the lopsided bargain seemed to work very well. Milly was not anambitious woman, she had no desire for the limelight for herself. Besides, she loved Julian, and rejoiced genuinely to see him where she knew he so loved to be—in the centre of an admiring crowd. She was proud of his success, proud to know that this dazzling, sought-after figure was her husband: and she felt, too, a deep and not unjustified pride in the thought that it was she, herself, who in all sorts of dull little inconspicuous ways had provided the background against which his wit and charm could sparkle their brightest, and his talents be displayed to best advantage.
    Right from the beginning, Julian had loved to give important little dinner-parties. Even in the early years, when they could ill afford it, he had always insisted that there should be wine, and flowers, and at least four courses of excellent food for their guests. Luckily, Milly was a good cook, though slow, so by dint of anxious planning and long hours at the stove, she always managed to produce a meal that was inexpensive and yet came up to Julian’s exacting standards: and if, by the time they sat down to table, the hostess was too flustered and exhausted to join much in the conversation what matter? It was Julian who was the star of the evening, Julian who led the conversation, filled up the glasses, radiated hospitality and charm. Sometimes he would chide her, afterwards, for being “such a little mouse!” but she knew that he liked it really, and she exerted such womanly guile as she possessed to see that her inadequacies remained a joke between them, and never became a serious issue.
    But they did become a serious issue, of course, in the end. As the years went by, and success followed success for Julian, the dinner parties became larger, and grander. Little lions from the social and artistic worlds were invited to them, and then bigger lions. Until, at last, secure in his own unassailable reputation, Julian began to feel the need of a wife who would be a credit to him. Not one who would outshine him, of course—as if such a thing were possible! —Oh no! But he needed someone elegant, sophisticated; a fitting hostess for a man in his position. And one night, he looked at his existingwife, nervously sipping her sweet sherry, boring the Finnish Ambassador, and allowing her anxieties about the chestnut soufflé to show on her round shiny face. He contemplated her faded ginger perm, her freckles, and her thickening figure bulging under her black velvet dinner dress; and that had been the beginning of the end.
    Milly had seen it coming, of course. She had known, long before he did, that she wasn’t going to be able to “keep up with him”. It often happened, of course, in their sort of circle. She had seen it with her own eyes, over and over again, among their acquaintances: the brilliant, ambitious husband rocketing his way to the top and discarding his dowdy, middle-aged wife en route, like a snake shedding its outworn skin in springtime. She’d met the