The story of Adrian Terry, a wealthy, fortyish playwright who has decided to retire from writing plays. His jealous hack-writer friend Roger Compton insists that Terry keep on writing, telling him he is a dramatist to the soles of his shoes. When Terry demurs, Compton attempts to provoke him with an idea: he states that every man's wife is another man's mistress. Compton then tells Terry that he has information that Terry's young wife Lissa had a dalliance when she was a debutante with dashing Ivy Leaguer Norrie Bliss, in a garden in Katonah.