“Positive. I remember noticing it. I meant to mention it before we went out.”

“I must have looked odd at the party.” She settled back again. “What was I saying?”

“How nice it was.”

“Oh yes. How nice.”

“Just because we haven’t quarreled today.”

“More than that. You’ve been quite…”

“Quite what?”

“Sweet to me.”

“Not something I make a habit of, is it, these days?” His fingers were tracing the line of her jaw. “I really thought you wouldn’t come today. After last week.”

“We had to go to the party,” she said.

“That hardly seemed sufficient reason. I thought, She won’t come—why should she? There’s a limit, I thought. All morning, I sat here thinking there was a limit.”

“And drinking,” she added, but pressed her hand, over his, against her neck.

“Well, naturally.” He yawned. “God, that awful party.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” she said again.

“The Fergusons are dull.”

“I like Phil.”

“Evie, then.”

“Well … But she’s a good person.”

“Good? I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a virtue to be good. It seems to be the cause of so much self-congratulation among our friends. The sort of people who were there tonight—who choose a convenient moment to behave well and then tell themselves how sensitive they are, how humane.”

“But isn’t that all one can hope for? And what is virtue, if not that?”

“Oh—something less conscious, I suppose; something more indiscriminate. Less egotistical, more anonymous. Like that brotherhood in Italy whose members still hide their faces under masks when they assist the poor.”

“I thought that was to protect them from the Plague.”

“Don’t be irritating. What I mean is, our good seem to be so concerned with themselves, so clubby, not mixing with the natives. Do you think those people tonight would ever make allowances, for instance, for those who want to live differently, or more fully, or risk themselves more?”

So he, too, is only concerned with himself, she reflected.

“Why, even religion—even the law, than which, after all, nothing could be more unjust—takes account of extenuating circumstances. But these people exclude anyone who doesn’t meet their particular definition of sensibility. I’m not sure that I don’t find it as distasteful as any other form of intolerance.”

“I suppose they think that anyone can be kind.”

“That’s like saying ‘Anyone can be clean’ in a city where most houses don’t have running water. And in the end the well-meaning people seem to do more harm than the others, who make no pretensions. Don’t you think?”

“Not entirely,” she said, with faint irony.

“Now you are only thinking of yourself. That’s the sort of thing that makes it impossible to have any real discussion with a woman. No matter how abstract, how impersonal the subject, they will always manage to connect it in some way to their love affairs.”