VII explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Scandal and Reputation

  Leilah's abandonment of Verplank and subsequent marriage to Barouffski create a scandal that Violet seeks to unravel, threatening Leilah's social standing.

• Desire and Self-Destruction

  Leilah's past choices—divorce, remarriage, and flight—lead to her current torment and uncertainty, illustrating self-destructive patterns driven by desire for peace and security.

• Fate and Karma

  Leilah reflects on her belief in fate and karma from the Vidya, seeing her current suffering as retribution for past actions, and questions whether tribulation ends with death.

Characters to notice

• Leilah Verplank

  Struggles with guilt and uncertainty after learning Verplank never received her letter; considers using Barouffski to reveal the truth.

• Violet Silverstairs

  Confronts Leilah about her lies, reveals Verplank will dine at her house, and tries to uncover the reason for Leilah's abandonment of Verplank.

• Barouffski

  Leilah considers using him as a channel to reveal the truth to Verplank; she married him as a barricade from the past.

• M. Verplank

  Referred to as Leilah's ex-husband; he never received Leilah's letter and is seen outside her home at the chapter's end.

• D'Arcy

  Mentioned by Violet in passing; noted as a dead shot and a topic of gossip.

Key passages

• “In the beautiful room, companioned by her nearest friend, she felt that sense of utter loneliness which in the great crises of life is experienced by all.”

  Despite being with her closest friend in a lovely setting, Leilah felt completely alone, as people often do during life's major crises.

  Highlights Leilah's emotional isolation despite external comfort.

• “It was not so long ago that she was on her way from New York to Coronado. She was happy then, happy with a happiness so perfect that it lifted her into the ultimate ecstasies which love and life comport.”

  Only six months earlier, she had been traveling to Coronado, experiencing a perfect happiness that elevated her to the highest joys of love and life.

  Contrasts her past joy with her present misery, emphasizing the brevity of happiness.

• “From the Vidya she had acquired faith in fate, the belief rather that we make our own destiny, that it is by our own hands that our lives are cast in places pleasant or the reverse.”

  Leilah learned from the Vidya to believe in fate, but also that people shape their own destiny through their actions, which determine their circumstances.

  Reveals Leilah's philosophical framework for understanding her suffering.

• “But whether retribution pursued its victim into future planes or abandoned them when they died, depended, she also believed, on how they faced it here.”

  She believed that whether punishment followed someone after death or ended at death depended on how they confronted it in life.

  Shows Leilah's belief in the importance of facing adversity with courage.