As a result of helping these people, she spends less and less time at home. George and Irene's mother are concerned about her unexplained absences from the house, and George accuses her of having an affair with Andrea, which causes her to leave him. She is eventually picked up by the police after helping a boy who had committed a theft evade arrest (she had told him to turn himself in). Irene is so shocked by George's overreaction that she doesn't try to argue with him, but her husband and the authorities decide to put her in a mental institution, and he abandons her.