Poor Mabel. Still, she had come to no harm. Selina’s face was painted like a piece of porcelain or one of those concubines you see in Chinese pictures, white and pink and pale green and scarlet and black. Her nails scuttled about like red beetles. She couldn’t keep her hands still. I took the photograph from her, laid it on the table and offered her coffee. She shook her head vehemently.

“I’m not stopping. I don’t know why I came. The thing is, darling”—she smiled brightly—“I’ve so much to say and I’ve no one else to say it to.” Suddenly, without warning, she launched into an account of her sex life with Max. People of the age I was then never consider the elderly or middle-aged as having sex. It all stops at forty, it must. The alternative would be too grotesque. “He isn’t very marvelous in the bedroom department, darling, but what else really would you expect? I’m not sure if you’ll believe this, but he was nearly fifty when we met and he’d never slept with anyone before. Never. I was the first. I can see from your face you don’t believe me but my answer to that is, why would he lie? It’s not exactly something to be proud of, is it? If he says he’s never had a woman till me, he’s not lying. I mean, I know young ones like you and that lovely boy in the photo, whoever he is, you’re having sex at school, twelve or thirteen, that’s normal, and even when I was your age—well, I think I was eighteen. No, seventeen. But forty-eight! Naturally I taught him everything.”

By this time I really was staring at her, aghast. I didn’t know what to say. I said nothing. Her porcelain face had flushed pink but otherwise she seemed not a bit discomposed.

“I can’t say he was a very apt pupil. Men are so selfish, aren’t they? Let me tell you, they are, whether you’ve learned that yet or not. If only they’d be patient, if only they’d wait a little, postpone their own pleasure, find out what pleases you, but they won’t. They’re scared. If they don’t do it at once, they’re afraid they won’t do it at all.” She paused and looked searchingly at me. “Oh well, I expect it’s different for you. Everything’s different now, everything’s changed. Women rule the world now. But me, I’ve missed the boat. It’s too late.