David had slapped her, his face contorted with pain and rage, and called her a slut and a whore and a dozen other names. She had begun to cry, but the defiance remained strong within her, for she had finally admitted to herself as well as to her husband a fact that she had known was true each of the previous fourteen days; she was in love, madly, crazily, blindly in love with Hale Bixby.

Bette had run out of the house, gotten into her car and raced to Bixby's hotel. She told him everything, about David finding out, how much she loved him, how much she wanted to be with him and the rest of the world be damned. Bixby had taken her into his arms, holding her close, calming her, and then he had said, "Don't worry, Bette, we won't have to be apart. I love you too, honey, and I want you with me always. I'll take you away to Chicago."

Bette could hardly believe her ears. "Oh Hale! When? When darling?"

"At the end of this week," he said. "I've just about wrapped up my surveyor's report on the new highway, and I should have everything ready by Saturday. I was going to tell you to come away with me."

"Hale, is it true? Is it really true?"

"It's really true," he'd laughed. "Now you go home and pack your things and tell your husband you're leaving him. Then you come back here. You can stay with me until we leave."

Bette had obeyed, a deep glow of happiness within her that far overshadowed the wrongness of what she was doing to David and to Tony. David had been drunk when she entered the house and told him she was going away with Hale Bixby, and he had been maudlin, crying in an unmanly way, pleading with her to stay. She had been oblivious to his entreaties, thinking of Hale, only of Hale, a real man, and she had packed everything she wanted to take with her into three suitcases. When she was ready to go, David was so drunk that he had passed out on the couch.