Maugham’s famous novel “The Painted Veil” is a full-of-tragedy love story set in a small Chinese town, where a young English bacteriologist comes with his wife to fight the cholera epidemic. England is a secular society—an amorous triangle. Hong Kong—epidemic—death—emptiness of triangular bonds and patterns. With the logic of his images, Maugham resolves the question of the comparative value of the moral and the beautiful, giving preference to the former: “… most of all beauty is contained in a life well lived. It is the highest work of art.”