It was first published in The Dial in January 1923, and was reprinted in the London Mercury in April 1923, and then in The Doves' Nest and Other Stories (1923).
He expounds how, after they got married in Wellington,[2] he did not answer one of her questions, pretending he didn't hear it.
He then talks about his parents, and mentions a recollection of a woman coming into the chemist's shop in tears and rushing out after buying her medication.
Later, he mentions that his father had a mistress, and that, on one occasion, he felt some kind of moment of intense bond with life, alone in his room.
The text is written in the modernist mode, without a set structure, and with many shifts in the narrative.