lace-like drifts; I didn't quit one woman to run to the skirts of another. He said it with bitter inward
laughter, sardonic and without mirth, thinking how at 43 our frustrations no longer make us romantic to anyone,
even ourselves, and probably at 100 we will still believe that the fact that we have quit one woman should
enhance our value in the eyes of another – certainly in those of her enemy.

Perhaps there is that in me which precludes even enmity, covetousness, on the part of another woman, he thought;
even on the part of one to whom I can never be husband, thinking how for so long he had been permitted to <be-
lieve> act upon the belief that only a female relation can be really jealous about a man: that that which
is glibly termed jealousy is just [purely?] reflex professional pride. And he wondered how much of his life had
been ordered by glib phrases into which none save himself any longer read the archaic and outworn [sense?].