Chapters 1 and 2 Summary

In Chapter 1, on a rainy, gloomy day in a cold and gloomy women's club in London, Mrs. Wilkins reads an advertisement in The Times newspaper advertising an opportunity for a holiday in Italy. As she immediately becomes excited and intrigued by the potential happiness the advertisement implies, narration comments on the dullness and routine of her life and marriage, and of her growing awareness that Mrs. Arbuthnot, whom she knows from church is also in the club and also seems to have been struck by the advertisement. Taking herself by surprise, the normally withdrawn Mrs. Wilkins sits across a narrow table from Mrs. Arbuthnot and asks whether she too has been drawn into the promise of the advertisement. The practical Mrs. Arbuthnot, who puts all her time, energy and capacity for feeling into helping and educating the poor in the name...