Gertrude Johnson is a novelist whose style is a cycle of understanding, criticism, and rejection. Her psychoanalyst proceeds to call it ‘the pattern of rejection,’ where her intelligence enables her to understand the world solely for the purpose of casting it away because it does not satisfy her. She is sharp, and doesn’t tolerate foolishness of any kind – and the only person in the world that she can be good to is her husband Sidney. Sidney is not as clever as she is, and he certainly does not understand the world; nevertheless, Gertrude loves him for not understanding, and he is the only person in the world for whom she lets down her walls and loves without restraint. Then Sidney falls sick, and Gertrude becomes so worried that she can barely go about her day. He recovers within a week, but Gertrude takes longer to recover from his sickness, wondering seriously for the first time about what she might do if something were to happen to him. She begins to suffer from sleeplessness – the knowledge that she had been so proud of is now an oppressive burden, forcing her to contemplate an existence without Sidney. An ache develops in her chest; the doctors say that nothing is wrong with her, but she feels it nonetheless and considers it her ‘real’ heart, while the actual organ itself is ‘false.’ She comes to realise that she has given Sidney absolute power over her, and if he ever came to know how much she loved him, this power would surely corrupt what they had. Gertrude is glad that Sidney does not know; she realises that her world-view has led to her life mirroring art. Her very existence has become a harsh criticism of the world – ‘a novel by Gertrude Johnson,’ where difficult realities cannot be avoided.