I WILL NEVER FORGET the rest of that evening, not a moment of it. Not a detail has been lost on me.

“You and I are living in two different marriages, Ben. It’s the truth, a sad truth. I’ll admit it,” said Meg.

I was flabbergasted by this announcement from my wife of nearly eleven years. We were sitting in the parlor on the uncomfortable horsehair sofa Meg’s father had given us as a wedding gift. We had just finished an awkward supper.

“Two different marriages? That’s a tough statement, Meg.”

“I meant it to be, Ben. When I was at Radcliffe and you were at Harvard I used to look at you and think, Now, this is the man I could always be with. I honestly believed that. So I waited for you while you went to law school. All the time you were at Columbia, in New York, I was wasting away at my father’s house. Then I waited some more, while you went to Cuba and fought in that war that none of us understood.”

“Meg, I’m sorry. It was a war.”

“But I’m still waiting!” She twirled around, her arms outstretched. And in that one gesture, in those few seconds, I realized the complete truth of what she was saying. Our house was not the one on Dupont Circle that Meg deserved, but a small frame bungalow on the wrong side of Capitol Hill. Cracks were visible in our plaster walls. The piano had broken keys. The roof leaked.

Through soft sobs Meg continued, “I’m not a selfish woman. I admire the cases you take, really I do. I want the poor people and the colored people to be helped. But I also want something for my girls and me. Is that so wrong?”

She wasn’t wrong. Maybe I had let her down by worrying too much about my own conscience, not thinking enough about her expectations and the life she believed she was getting when she married me.