Mrs. Verplank

Mrs. Verplank is the woman at the center of the Verplank affair — the one who told Gulian she had taken Barouffski as a barricade between them, then flushed when he pressed her, revealing relations and consequences she had not admitted. She is desired, judged, and discussed at the Opéra and the club, where her daily presence at the Ritz is tallied against her supposed meetings with d'Arcy. She matters because her divided will — wanting one thing, doing another — is the engine of the novel's central crisis, and because the men around her keep mistaking her body for a territory to be won.