Ashton Voss confronts his wife, reminding her of past humiliations and threatening to proceed with his repeated divorce petition unless she continues to obey him. A bystander comments on the tragic, controlling nature of their high-society marriage. The wife, having begged and withdrawn the petition countless times before, now internally resolves not to do so again. Later, at a bar, she makes a shocking proposal to another man, Mr. Morrow: he will fund her mother's lab, and she will marry him the day her divorce from Ashton is finalized.