The 1925 novel The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham derives its title from Percy Shelley’s 1824 sonnet, which begins “Lift not the painted veil which those who live / Call Life.” The action takes place during a cholera epidemic in which a missionary doctor quotes on his deathbed the final line of Oliver Goldsmith’s famous elegy: “The man recovered” but “the dog it was that died!”

Set in pre-World War II China, The Painted Veil tells the story of Kitty Fane, a flighty, spoilt young English woman who, soon after her wedding, has an affair with a married man. Her husband, a physician and infectious diseases specialist, had been very much in love with her. When he discovers her infidelity, he offers her a divorce if her lover will divorce his wife and marry her. As her lover refuses to do so, Kitty’s only option is to accompany her husband to a remote village in China, where he is going to investigate a dangerous outbreak of cholera. The doctor hardly ever looks at her or speaks to her. One feels he would not care if she were to contract the disease.

When the couple arrive at the village they are told that men are dying like flies. An Englishman, however, tells Kitty there is no great risk provided she has been vaccinated, takes proper precautions, boils her milk and water, and does not eat fresh fruit or uncooked vegetables.

The streets of the village are empty. The temples have been abandoned. The people are dying so fast that it is hardly possible to bury them. In some houses, the whole family has been swept away, and there is no one to perform the funeral rites. A Chinese beggar wearing patched blue rags is seen lying on his back, dead, his legs stretched out and his arms thrown over his head.

The doctor tends to the sick, trying to clean up the city and provide pure drinking water. He does not seem to care where he goes or what he does. He risks his life twenty times a day. Yet, unlike his predecessor, he is not moved by the suffering. He does not seem to care about science, either. “Your husband isn’t here because he cares a damn if a hundred thousand Chinese die of cholera, so why is he here?” wonders the other Englishman present.

The Mother Superior of the convent is doing what she can with her limited resources. “We are so short of beds that we have to put two patients in one, and the moment a sick man dies, he must be bundled out in order to make room for another.” When a beggar clad in faded shapeless rags appears, he asks Kitty for alms. He looks as though he had been raked through a muck heap. His skin is hard and rough and tanned like the hide of a goat, his bare legs emaciated, his cheeks hollow, his eyes wild like those of a madman. Kitty turns from him in frightened horror, and the chair-bearers, in gruff tones, bid him begone, but he is importunate, and to be rid of him, shuddering, Kitty gives him a few coins.

Soon the Mother Superior comes in. Her eyes are swollen from weeping. One of her sisters died last night.” Her voice has lost its even tone, and her eyes are filled with tears. “It is wicked of me to grieve, for I know that her good and simple soul has flown straight to Heaven; she was a saint, but it is difficult always to control one’s weakness.”

Then, the doctor catches cholera. He becomes violently ill and dies. His last words are, “The dog it was that died.” Kitty survives and eventually goes back to England. Her entire person undergoes a change. Renouncing her selfish, narcissistic mindset, she returns to her widowed father. He has been appointed Chief Justice of the Bahamas, and she will go with him.