Ten years into a marriage, the wife is disappointed by the husband's lack of financial success, meaning she has to work and can't treat herself and the husband finds the wife slovenly and mean-spirited: she neither cooks not cleans particularly well and is generally disagreeable. In turn, he alternately ignores her and treats her as a servant. Neither is particularly happy, not helped by their unsatisfactory lodgers. The husband is easily seduced by an ex-colleague, a widow with a small child who needs some security, and considers leaving his wife. She fights back, writing to and visiting the mistress to demand she leaves her husband alone. He consults his friends, she her relatives. Around them, marriages are ending in fights and suicides but in this case, the mistress gives up the stressful fight, leaving the couple together again, no happier than before.