The second chapter switches to his elegant socialite wife, Sylvia, who is staying with her mother at Lobscheid, a quiet German resort, with their priest, Father Consett. Sylvia had left Tietjens for a lover, Major Perowne, but became bored with him. She's bored in Lobscheid too, but needs the alibi of being there to look after her mother, to account for her absence when she returns to London. Consett probes the state of her marriage, and senses that her anger towards Tietjens is far from indifference.
