The title is a reference to Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1824 sonnet, which begins "Lift not the painted veil which those who live / Call Life".

The biographer Richard Cordell notes that the book was influenced by Maugham's study of science and his work as a houseman at St Thomas' Hospital.

Garstin, a pretty upper-middle class debutante, squanders her early youth amusing herself by living a social high life, during which her domineering mother attempts to arrange a "brilliant match" for her.

In a panic that her much younger, and less attractive, sister Doris will upstage her by marrying first, Kitty consents to Walter's ardent marriage proposition with the words, "I suppose so".

Aware that the cuckolded Walter is his administrative inferior, Charlie feels confident that the bacteriologist will avoid scandal to protect his career and reputation.

For her part, Kitty, who never felt affection for her husband, grasps that he is fully aware of her infidelity (but he initially refrains from confronting her), and she begins to despise his apparent cowardice.

Walter eventually confronts Kitty about the affair and gives her a choice; either accompany him to a village on the mainland beset by an outbreak of cholera or submit to a public and socially humiliating divorce.

Their conversation, when she realises he doesn't wish to make a sacrifice for the relationship, unfolds gradually, as Kitty grasps Charlie's true nature.

Her father, a reasonably successful barrister, is appointed chief justice of a minor British colony in the Caribbean (The Bahamas) and she persuades him to allow her to accompany him there.