[STORY] I envied her life… without knowing the truth
I Envied Her Life… Without Knowing the Truth
Chapter One: Two Women, Two Worlds
They say social media only ever shows the best of us, never the truth beneath it. Sometimes all it takes is a single photograph to make someone envy an entire life, a single smile to convince the world that a heart isn’t quietly breaking. This is the story of a woman who believed her closest friend had everything — love, romance, constant surprises — until the day she discovered that the life she had envied for so long had never truly existed at all.
Maya and Sabrina were two women that everything seemed to separate, and yet everything seemed to bind together. Life had carried them down very different roads, but their friendship had survived since university, thick as ever, the kind of bond that outlives distance and disagreement.
Maya lived a quiet, unremarkable life. Her husband, Daniel, was a reserved man — gentle, sometimes clumsy with his words, but steady and devoted in a way that never called attention to itself. He was not the type to buy roses without reason or plan candlelit surprises. His love spoke in smaller dialects: cooking dinner the moment he noticed Maya looked tired, texting her in the middle of a slow afternoon just to ask if she was okay, remembering the exact way she liked her tea.
For years, that quiet devotion had been enough for Maya. At least, she had always believed it was enough.
Sabrina, on the other hand, was radiant, magnetic, always in motion. She ran a wildly popular Instagram account where she documented her life in vivid detail — her outfits, her travels, and most of all, the constant, cinematic attention of her husband, Liam. Ordinary moments transformed, through her camera lens, into scenes from a fairy tale: candlelit dinners, spontaneous flower deliveries, weekend getaways captioned with words like blessed and he never stops surprising me.
Every post seemed to whisper the same message to the world: Sabrina was the luckiest woman alive.
Maya and Sabrina had married around the same time, both still finding their footing in the delicate, uncertain rhythm of early married life — the season when routines start to calcify and every young wife quietly wonders whether she is doing it right. Maya, without ever admitting it out loud, had begun watching other couples with a kind of anxious curiosity, not jealousy exactly, just a hunger to know if her own marriage measured up. And so, whenever she scrolled past the lavish attention Liam showered on Sabrina, she found herself comparing — softly, almost without meaning to.
Chapter Two: The First Crack
One quiet weekend evening, Maya sat curled on the sofa, phone in hand, scrolling through Sabrina’s latest story: a video of a candlelit dinner, rose petals scattered across a linen tablecloth, soft jazz playing somewhere off-camera. The caption read simply: Surprise dinner tonight. I am a blessed woman.
At that exact moment, Daniel walked into the living room, having just finished tidying the kitchen, wiping his hands absently on a dish towel.
“Do you want me to make you some tea?” he asked, in the same easy, unremarkable tone he always used.
Maya looked up at him, and then her eyes drifted, almost involuntarily, back to the video still glowing on her screen. The contrast struck her like a slap. On one side: candlelight, rose petals, a violin somewhere in the background. On the other: her husband, standing in their small living room, offering her tea.
“Whatever you want,” she said flatly.
Daniel disappeared back into the kitchen. Maya kept staring at her phone, and something inside her shifted — quietly, almost imperceptibly, like a hairline crack spreading across glass that had, until that moment, looked perfectly intact.
The next day, she met Sabrina for lunch at their usual corner restaurant. As always, Sabrina arrived laughing, flawlessly made up, radiating an energy that seemed almost contagious.
“Did you see what Liam got me yesterday?” she asked, sliding into her seat.
“Yes, I saw it. It was beautiful,” Maya replied.
Sabrina smiled with the soft, satisfied pride of a woman who believed — or wanted desperately to believe — that she was deeply loved. “I hope you get a gift like that someday, Maya. It really does feel wonderful.”
Maya nodded and offered a compliment about their obvious closeness. But when she got home that evening and found Daniel repairing an old lamp she loved, proudly holding it up like a trophy — “Look, good as new” — she only managed a forced smile. As he spoke to her, she caught herself, almost against her will, comparing every detail of her life to Sabrina’s: her plain apartment, her quiet husband, her routine evenings. Suddenly, everything about her own life felt dull, muted, gray.
That night she fell asleep with a strange, unfamiliar feeling — not grief exactly, not sadness, just a quiet, nagging question. A small fracture in a life she had always considered more than sufficient. A fracture she never imagined she would feel.
Chapter Three: The Slow Poison of Comparison
In the days that followed, Maya’s phone became less a distraction and more a compulsion. What had once been idle scrolling turned, almost imperceptibly, into habit. Every free moment sent her thumb reaching for Instagram, where Sabrina’s dazzling posts waited like a drug she couldn’t resist.
One morning at work, she saw a new photo: Sabrina posing with an enormous bouquet of pale pink roses that filled the entire frame. Beneath it, dozens of comments scrolled by. Liam is incredible. You’re so lucky. I want a husband just like him.
Maya sat frozen for a moment, watching the wave of admiration, envy, and longing pour in from strangers. And without quite admitting it to herself, a small, bitter seed took root somewhere inside her chest.
She set the phone down, but her mind stayed tangled in the image. She found herself wondering, almost resentfully, why Daniel never brought her flowers anymore. He used to, once — in the earliest days, when they were still discovering each other. Now his affection expressed itself differently. But in that moment, his quiet gestures suddenly felt insufficient, almost embarrassing by comparison.
When she arrived home, she found Daniel in the kitchen making foufou, her favorite dish. He looked up as she entered. “Oh, you’re home early. I thought I’d make your favorite.”
“Thanks,” she said, her voice strangely distant. Daniel, oblivious to the shift in her tone, simply smiled and kept cooking.
At dinner, he set a plate in front of her. “I added a little extra cassava, the way you like it.”
She nodded, but her gaze was somewhere else entirely. “You know,” she began softly, “Liam got Sabrina another gift.”
Daniel glanced at her. “Good for her.”
“No — I mean, they just seem so happy.”
His answer, so simple and sincere, disarmed her more than she wanted to admit: “Then I’m glad for them.”
The following day, Maya went for a walk with Sabrina, watching her friend with new, colder eyes as she recounted their latest date. “He planned the whole thing in secret. You should have seen the table, Maya — candles everywhere, a violinist playing right behind us. It was magical.”
“That’s lovely,” Maya said, a stiff smile fixed on her face. “And you, Daniel — has he done anything special recently?” Sabrina asked, curious.
Maya hesitated. “He made my favorite dish last night.”
“That’s sweet,” Sabrina said lightly. “But still — a little surprise now and then never hurts.”
The comment lodged itself in Maya’s mind like a splinter. That night, lying in bed, unable to sleep, images of Sabrina’s gifts and glamorous evenings churned endlessly through her thoughts. Beside her, Daniel breathed steadily, exhausted from his day, and turned his back to her — as he did every night, purely out of habit. A gesture that had once meant nothing at all suddenly took on a different color: the color of neglect.
A single, devastating thought struck her: What if I’m not actually as happy as I thought I was? The question kept her staring at the ceiling long after midnight.
Chapter Four: The Widening Distance
The days passed, but instead of easing, Maya’s discomfort deepened. It was no longer a quiet unease — it had become a constant, gnawing presence in her mind. She began watching Daniel’s every move with a new, almost hostile scrutiny, as if searching for proof that he wasn’t doing enough.
One Thursday evening, coming home from work, she found him on the sofa sorting through bills. He looked up with a calm smile. “You’re home, love. I was thinking we could go out to eat tomorrow night.”
Maya stood there for a moment. “What suddenly brought this on?” she asked, her tone sharper than she intended.
Daniel hesitated. “I just thought it would be good for us. We don’t go out much.”
She clicked her tongue, exasperated by her own reaction. “Maybe because you never plan anything. You always wait for me to say something. Even Sabrina gets more surprises than I do, and she never even asks.”
Daniel flinched, wounded by the sudden accusation. “Maya, why do you keep comparing us to them?”
“I’m not comparing,” she snapped. “I’m just stating facts. Do you realize I can’t remember the last time you did something romantic? Not even a small gift, a different kind of evening — nothing.”
He set the bills down, his expression more hurt than angry. “I thought our routines suited you. I thought just being present was enough.”
“Present?” she repeated incredulously. “What does that even mean? Sitting here in silence every night, doing the same things every week? We sound like an old couple in their fifties.”
Daniel had no answer. He looked at her as though he no longer recognized the woman across from him.
Later that night, when he sat beside her on the bed, Maya looked up from her phone, already irritated before he’d said a word.
“What do you want?” she asked.
He took a deep breath. “I’d like to understand what you expect from me, Maya. It feels like no matter what I do, it doesn’t reach you anymore.”
She set her phone down, visibly exhausted by a conversation she didn’t want to have. “What I want is simple. I want you to surprise me once in a while. I want you to remember I’m your wife, not a roommate. I want you to actually try to seduce me sometimes. Look at Liam — he’s always finding new ways to make Sabrina happy.”
Silence fell between them. It was the first time she had spoken that name in that particular tone. Daniel looked away. “I see,” he murmured.
Chapter Five: The Dinner Party
The following Sunday, they were invited to dinner at a mutual friend’s house. Sabrina arrived with her usual sparkle, and Maya immediately noticed the earrings she was wearing.
“They’re beautiful,” Maya said sincerely. “They suit you perfectly.”
Sabrina beamed. “Thank you — Liam gave them to me this morning. A little surprise, no reason at all.”
Maya felt her shoulders sink. She glanced discreetly at Daniel, searching his face for some reaction, but he was chatting calmly with another guest, entirely unbothered, as if the scene held no particular significance for him at all.
The drive home was silent. The moment they stepped through their apartment door, Maya’s frustration finally erupted.
“You didn’t feel anything? Nothing at all, not even a twinge? She gets gifts every single week while I have to settle for a reheated dinner.”
Daniel slowly removed his shoes. “Maya, not everything is measured in gifts.”
“Easy to say when you never give any,” she shot back.
He looked at her, weary. “You want me to spend money I don’t have just to prove that I love you? This isn’t about money, Maya.”
“It’s about effort,” she said. “About willingness. About attention.”
He ran a hand over his face. “You know what, Maya? I really do everything I can. Maybe it’s not spectacular. Maybe I’m not Liam. But I work myself to exhaustion trying to make you happy. And sometimes — sometimes it feels like no matter what I do, you look at me like I’m not enough. Like I was just… the default choice.”
She shook her head bitterly. “It’s never enough.”
“I never wanted to hurt you,” Daniel said. “But I’m a man, Maya, not a machine. I have limits too, and you’re pushing me right to the edge of mine without even realizing it.”
He simply left the room, walking slowly, like a man carrying a weight far too heavy for his shoulders.
Chapter Six: The Stranger’s Attention
In the days that followed, the atmosphere at home changed completely. Daniel spoke less, smiled less. He left early and came home late. Maya oscillated between a bitter kind of pride and a creeping guilt, telling herself he needed to finally understand — but deep down, she could feel something cracking beyond repair.
One evening, opening the fridge, she found a small plastic container — a dessert she loved. A small, quiet gesture. Nothing spectacular. But instead of touching her, she shut the fridge door abruptly. “Now he wakes up,” she murmured with bitter irony. The gesture that once would have delighted her now felt meaningless. She had the distinct sense of being trapped in a spiral she no longer controlled.
Maya spoke to Daniel less and less, and when she did, her voice had lost its warmth. He, in turn, moved carefully around her, as if terrified that one wrong word might trigger another storm.
One Saturday afternoon, Sabrina invited Maya over just to unwind. Maya accepted, relieved at the chance to escape the icy atmosphere of her own apartment. When she arrived, Sabrina was on the phone and waved her toward the terrace, where Liam sat with a glass of juice.
“Maya,” he said, flashing an open smile. “Perfect timing. Sabrina will be down in a minute.”
She sat across from him, a little hesitant. “How are you?” he asked, studying her with an interest she’d never noticed before.
“I’m managing,” she replied, trying not to say too much.
Liam tilted his head slightly, as though something about her had caught his attention. “You seem troubled. Is it your husband?”
She paused. “Why would you ask that?”
He shrugged. “I’m observant. And you don’t have the same glow you used to.”
The compliment, subtle but unmistakable, disarmed her completely. It was a simple sentence, but she wasn’t used to that kind of remark from a man who wasn’t her husband.
“I’ve had a difficult week,” she said, lowering her eyes.
Liam took a sip of his drink. “You know, sometimes men forget that a woman doesn’t live on stability alone. She also needs to be looked at, appreciated, desired.”
Maya wanted to respond, but Sabrina appeared just then, smiling as always. “Already deep in conversation without me?” she teased. The subject changed, but Liam’s words kept circling in Maya’s mind long after she’d gone home.
A memory surfaced — weeks earlier, at a dinner for four, Liam had made a comment that struck her as strange at the time. Maya, I swear, if Daniel hadn’t met you first, I would have stolen you myself. He’d laughed it off as a joke. Everyone had laughed along. She’d told herself it was nothing more than a clumsy compliment. Nothing more. She refused to believe there could be anything else behind it.
Chapter Seven: The Line That Was Crossed
In the days that followed, light, casual conversations began between Maya and Liam. Everything remained innocent, at least on the surface. A message here and there, then two, exchanges about nothing in particular. But every so often, Liam would slip in a comment designed to plant doubt. You deserve to be celebrated. I understand why some women feel invisible in their own homes.
Maya couldn’t quite explain how she had arrived here. She wasn’t trying to flirt. But she wasn’t cutting the conversation off either. She told herself it was purely friendly, that it meant nothing. Yet every message from Liam touched her more than she cared to admit.
One evening, while Daniel was in the kitchen, Maya received a notification. Liam had sent her a photo — a sunset from his balcony — with the caption: I wish you could have seen this. It was beautiful.
Her heart quickened. She knew exactly what kind of intention lay behind a message like that. But she didn’t respond right away. She simply stood there, phone in hand.
“Coming to eat?” Daniel called from the kitchen.
She startled. “Coming.” She set the phone down as though she’d been caught doing something wrong — though nothing concrete had happened, only words. And yet those words were enough to plant real doubt in her mind. Why was Liam saying these things to her? Why did she feel flattered?
She told herself it was nothing, but through dinner she remained distant, silent, a prisoner of her own thoughts. Daniel tried a light conversation. “I booked a little outing for us Saturday. It might do us good.”
“An outing,” she repeated without enthusiasm.
“Yes, a simple dinner.”
She nodded without smiling. “Okay. We’ll see.” Her tone made Daniel’s hope falter.
Two days later, Maya found herself at Sabrina’s again. This time Liam was working on his laptop in the living room; Sabrina had stepped out briefly to collect a delivery. Liam turned to Maya. “You’ve been dressing differently lately. More confident. It suits you.”
She felt heat rise to her cheeks. “I just felt like changing things up a little.”
He smiled slowly. “Sometimes we change because we want to be seen by the right person.”
Maya’s heart raced. This was no longer innocent. He had just crossed a clear line, and she knew it.
When she got home, she felt unsettled — not happy, not guilty, simply disoriented. She stopped in front of the table, where Daniel had left a small box wrapped with a blue ribbon.
“That’s for you,” Daniel said, stepping closer. “I noticed you kept looking at the bracelets at the market stalls, so I found a simple one. I thought you might like it.”
Maya opened the box. Inside sat a delicate silver bracelet, understated but elegant. She stayed silent — too long.
“You don’t like it?” Daniel asked, worried.
She swallowed her frustration, but her answer came out cold. “It’s nice. Thanks.”
Daniel’s eyes fell, wounded. And Maya felt a strange anger rising within her — anger at herself. Why did a simple bracelet move her less than an ambiguous message from a man who wasn’t her husband? She hated what she was feeling. But she no longer knew how to climb out of it. That night, something settled between her and Liam — fragile but real, a space where boundaries had quietly begun to dissolve.
Chapter Eight: The Knock at the Door
The following week, Maya felt an inner restlessness she could no longer hide. Caught between her secret exchanges with Liam and the persistent unease in her own home, she felt trapped in a spiral she no longer controlled.
One Friday evening, just as she’d closed the curtains, someone knocked at the door — a nervous, frantic knock. Curious, Maya went to answer.
Sabrina stood there, unrecognizable. Her eyes were swollen, her lipstick gone, her voice trembling as she simply said Maya’s name.
“Maya… can I come in?”
Maya let her in without a single question. Sabrina sat down, hands clasped together as though trying to stop them from shaking. Maya had never seen her friend like this.
“Sabrina, what’s happening?” Maya asked.
Sabrina finally lifted her eyes, and Maya saw something she had never seen in her before — a heart broken all the way to the bone.
“I found out something about Liam,” Sabrina said, her voice cracking. “He’s… he’s seeing another woman.”
Maya opened her mouth, unable to respond. This was not what she had expected to hear — not after all those photographs, all those gifts, all those declarations online that had made hundreds of strangers dream of a life like hers.
“Sabrina, I’m so sorry,” Maya managed.
“I confronted him,” Sabrina continued. “I asked him calmly — ‘Are you seeing someone else?’ And do you know what he said? He said yes. Just like that. No shame at all. He even added that he figured I already suspected.” She broke into deep, wrenching sobs, as though she’d been holding them back for months.
Maya pulled her into her arms without thinking twice. Sabrina curled against her, her voice reduced to a broken whisper. “Do you understand, Maya? He didn’t even try to deny it. He didn’t beg. He didn’t explain anything. He just said, ‘If you want to leave, leave. If you want to stay, stay.’ As if I were interchangeable. As if I were no one.”
A shudder ran through her shoulders. She pulled back slightly and wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “I screamed. I cried right in front of him. He didn’t even look at me. He just walked out. And you know what? Ten minutes later he texted me: I might be home late. As if I no longer existed.”
Maya raised a hand to her mouth, thinking back on every image she had envied, every moment she had believed Sabrina was living inside a perfect marriage.
“But you always looked so happy in your posts,” she said quietly.
Sabrina lowered her eyes. “Everything you see online is theater, Maya. None of it is real. Nothing. I wanted everyone to believe I had it all figured out. I wanted to convince myself. So I posted, I filmed.” A tear slid down her hand. “People commented, perfect couple, I dream of your life. I would read that and tell myself that if I stopped putting on the show, I’d have nothing left. So I kept going.” She pressed a hand to her forehead, overwhelmed. “I even started believing it was normal — that a man could love one woman and see another, that a gift was enough to erase the pain.”
Maya felt an immense weight drop into her stomach — a mixture of shame, regret, and brutal clarity. “Sabrina, why didn’t you ever tell me? I would have wanted to know. I would have wanted to be there for you.”
“You have nothing to blame yourself for,” Sabrina said gently. “I didn’t tell anyone. I was too afraid of being judged, too humiliated, and I wanted you to see me as someone who had everything figured out. I didn’t want you to see that I was clinging to a marriage that was destroying me.” She continued, her eyes bright with pain. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
Maya’s eyes widened, thrown off balance. “You’re going to stay with him?”
“Yes. I’m going to stay. I’m not packing my things. Where would I even go? To whom?”
She drew a long breath, as though what she was about to say cost her more than everything else combined. “You know, Maya, I’m not just afraid of losing him. I’m afraid of losing myself. I’ve fought for so long to make our relationship look like something, that I don’t even know who I am without him anymore.” She looked away, ashamed. “I grew up in a house where I was always told that strong women fix things, that they hold a household together even when it hurts.” She managed a broken smile. “And before all this, I knew a different Liam. Faithful, attentive, funny. I think I still hope that man exists somewhere, that I can find him again if I just stay long enough. I’m not staying out of pride, Maya. I’m staying because I don’t know how to live any other way, and because deep down, I’m afraid of being alone with my own flaws.” She reached out slightly, as if asking for support. “Maya, I’m lost, I’m hurt, but I don’t want anyone to tell me to leave. I just needed to empty my heart somewhere, and I know you won’t judge me.”
Maya took her hand gently, her own eyes shining with emotion. “I will never judge you.”
Sabrina looked relieved, as though those words had lifted an enormous weight from her chest. “Thank you,” she whispered. For a long moment, they simply sat together in silence. And in that exact instant, a truth Maya had been refusing to see finally broke open inside her. She had compared her own marriage to a lie, and she had nearly sacrificed her own happiness for an illusion that had been quietly bleeding the whole time.
Chapter Nine: The Morning After
The door closed softly behind Sabrina. Maya stood motionless, her mind still struggling to catch up with what she had just learned. And for the first time in a long while, she wasn’t thinking about Sabrina, or Liam, or their photographs, or their gifts. She was thinking about herself — about what she had done, about what she had nearly destroyed without ever realizing it.
She thought back to every eye-roll she’d given while Daniel spoke, every sigh, every reproach, every sharp comparison — when in reality, he had already been doing the one thing he knew how to do: love her.
She began to cry, silently. She had traded the quiet stability of her own home for a mirage, and for the whisper inside her that she had refused, until now, to listen to: You are losing someone who truly loves you.
That night, Maya didn’t reach for her phone. She didn’t check anyone’s stories. She simply sat in the silence and, at last, looked at her own life without a filter.
The next morning, Maya woke before dawn — not because she had slept well, but because she had barely slept at all. She heard the front door open; Daniel was returning from his morning run. His steps were slow, almost hesitant. When he saw her standing by the table, he stopped short.
“You’re up early,” he said softly.
Maya wiped her hands on her apron. “I wanted to make you something.”
He looked at the table, surprised. “For me?”
“Yes,” she answered, too quickly. The old discomfort rose again, but this time she didn’t look away.
“Thank you, Maya.” He sat down, still a little wary, like someone who doesn’t quite trust a sudden change. “Is everything okay, Maya?”
“I think it’s time we talked,” she said. “Daniel, I want to apologize.”
He blinked, surprised, almost worried. “Why?”
She took a breath, searching for the right words. “For everything I said. For the way I treated you. I was unfair. I was harsh, and I had no good reason to be.”
Daniel stayed silent. Maya continued, her eyes glistening. “I compared our life to something that didn’t even exist. I didn’t appreciate what you did for me. I ignored your love. I hurt you without thinking, and I regret it more than you know.” She wiped away a tear. “You didn’t deserve that, Daniel.”
When Daniel finally spoke, his voice was low, moved, steady. “I never wanted you to feel bad. I just wanted us to stay close. I didn’t understand what you needed from me. It felt like I was losing you a little more each day.”
Maya pressed her lips together. “I know. And I’m sorry.” She placed her hand over his. “I don’t want us to keep drifting apart.”
Daniel looked at her hand, then into her eyes. He hesitated for a moment, then finally laced his fingers through hers. “I’m willing to try again,” he said simply. “But walk with me. Don’t push me away when I come closer.”
The words pierced her. “I will walk with you, Daniel. I promise.”
Chapter Ten: What Was Left Unseen
The weeks that followed brought Maya and Daniel back into conversation, slowly, carefully. Maya paid close attention to herself now. She no longer let comparisons slip into her home. She stopped looking at social media through the same envious eyes. Instead, she began searching for truth in the life she actually lived, not the one she imagined through someone else’s carefully curated lens. Maya came to understand, at last, that happiness was rarely spectacular.
Meanwhile, Sabrina continued posting her life online exactly as before. The photographs lost none of their sparkle — the bouquets, the outings, the evening gowns. Nothing hinted at the pain she still carried beneath the surface.
One Tuesday, Maya stopped by to check on her. Sabrina smiled, flawlessly composed as always. Liam moved through the living room with his usual easy confidence, his laugh as effortless as ever. No one would have guessed at the crisis that had nearly ended their marriage weeks before.
When Liam stepped out, Sabrina approached Maya. “We had a long talk,” she said. “We’re going to try to move forward. I don’t want to lose him. He’s imperfect, but he’s my husband.” She looked away. “I don’t know if it will ever fully heal, but I want to save my home. That’s what matters to me.”
Maya nodded. She understood. She didn’t judge.
Sabrina continued, more softly. “We never show everything, Maya. What you see here—” she gestured toward the flamboyant bouquet resting on the table— “is just what I choose to let out. The rest, I keep for myself.”
Maya placed a hand on her arm. “As long as you’re at peace with your choice, that’s what matters.”
Sabrina managed a fragile smile. “Peace — I’m still looking for it. But I’m trying.” And Maya understood that, behind the facade, behind the pain, Sabrina was not ready to give up. It was simply her way of loving, her way of staying upright.
When Maya arrived home, she found Daniel in the kitchen. He looked up and smiled. She placed a hand on his chest.
“Thank you for not giving up on me,” she said.
Daniel brushed a hand against her cheek. “I love you, Maya. Even when it’s complicated.”
She smiled. “I love you too.”
Moral
What people choose to show the world is only ever a fragment of their lives — usually the prettiest fragment. The truth so often hides in what remains unspoken. What is displayed with pride can quietly become a source of bitterness for someone who feels forgotten. Measuring our own lives against someone else’s highlight reel can cost us the very thing we already had, even when what we possess is genuinely precious. Every household carries its own cracks, its own trials, its own secrets — and sometimes, a husband’s quiet, steady devotion is the very thing that shields his wife from the hollow, flattering words of another man.
— The End —
