Kate Hemenway, the favorite daughter of the deceased New York justice, Lionel Hemenway, learns that her mother cuckolded Lionel throughout his life. According to Kate’s uncle, Lionel had permitted his wife to have a decades-long affair with a private school teacher, Sam, because of his sexual impotence. In light of this new information, Kate reflects on her own life, tracing how her father’s muted masculinity served as seeds to her own disasters. Kate remembers her first husband, Sumner Shepard. Shepard was a promising Harvard law graduate who had clerked for Lionel after finishing school. Lionel and Sumner had deeply admired one another and frequently had intensive intellectual conversations that Kate had no interest in. To attract Sumner, Kate feigned interest. However, after they got married, he was disappointed to learn that she was no aesthete. Before enlisting in World War II, Sumner confided in Lionel and not Kate. Sumner died at Dunkirk. Beyond tainting her relationship with Sumner, Kate also blames her father's influence on her unhappy marriage to Dicky Phelps, Sumner’s former friend and fellow lawyer. Dicky, an unabashed social climber, had revered Lionel for his many accomplishments. In turn, Lionel had mocked Dicky, but Dicky’s awe kept him from realizing Lionel’s disdain. After Lionel’s death, Dicky mourned more than Kate. She was disgusted at how Dicky worshipped a man who never thought twice about him. Reflecting on her lovers and her father, Kate concludes that, had her father not been so emasculated by her mother’s affair, her relationships would’ve been more successful.