Ashton writes that she gladly accepts Stark’s dinner invitation, promising to wear her new dress and “eat like a pig.” She is thankful not having embarrassed the company; she had even considered making some sort of public statement but was concerned about making Dartry sound like a fool, which would have happened if she had tried to explain. She prefers looking like a flighty, hard-hearted woman to impugning a good man’s name; however, she would like to explain herself to Stark and tells him this story.

Stark was in the Navy in 1942, so he never met Dartry; Sophie was also away and only learned about the whole affair afterwards, and then Ashton swore her to secrecy. The longer she went without saying anything to Stark, the less important it became for him to know, especially since it made her look “witless and foolish for getting engaged in the first place.”

Ashton thought she was in love, and to prepare for sharing her home with her new husband, she cleared out half of her drawers, closet, medicine cabinet, and desk to accommodate him. After removing her rag doll from the bed and buying some more masculine hangers, she felt her apartment was now ready for two rather than one. 

On the day before the wedding, Dartry was moving the last of his belongings in while Ashton was out; she returned to find he had bound up eight boxes of her books for storage so that he could fill her bookshelves with his athletic trophies. Dartry thought he had made a dramatic improvement by relegating her books to the basement, but Ashton had been too appalled to speak as she saw statues and certificates for everything from success playing ping pong to being the last man standing in a tug-of-war. She screamed at him to put her books back, and that was how it all began.

Ashton told Dartry that she could never marry a man whose happiness lay in hitting a ball or killing a bird; he countered with remarks about “damned bluestockings and shrews.” Things degenerated from there, and they wondered what they had ever talked about for the past four months. He left in a huff, and she unpacked her books.

She reminds Stark that she had laughed when he met her train last year to tell her that her apartment had been bombed; he thought she was hysterical, but she was laughing at the irony. If she had allowed Dartry to store all her books in the basement, she would still have them. Ashton tells Stark she would prefer it if, as a demonstration of their long friendship, he would never comment about this story.

She thanks him for the information about Markham V. Reynolds, Junior, and hopes Reynolds sent condolence flowers to Stark’s secretary; Ashton is not sure she could have withstood such a man. If she ever does meet Reynolds, Ashton teases, she will do what Odysseus did when he wanted to escape the Sirens: She will lash herself to a mast before peeking at him.

Ashton is looking forward to talking to the Times about the article, though she is still a bit worried that they will want her to write something frivolous.