We did not have a honeymoon. ‘I don’t know about yours,’ Camilla had said, ‘but all mine have been disasters. Why don’t we stay here, refuse to answer the phone, and take a short holiday later?’ ‘When we know each other better?’ I quipped. I didn’t demur though. Harmony, as I’ve explained, was now our principle, mutuality our keynote. Harmoniously we slept after all our guests had left us, and harmoniously we awoke the next morning – our eyes opening at precisely the same moment, for we were synchronized as well as harmonized – to find the light streaming in on our now lawful nakedness. ‘How are you? she asked. ‘How are you?’ I replied. ‘Why don’t you close the curtains?’ she suggested, and that was so unlike her, so contrary to her usual preference as to curtains, that I wondered if there was now to be a merging of all the minor impulses of self in one great symphony of consonance and accord. I slipped out of bed to do as she wanted – or was it to do as she wanted that I wanted? – and when I returned I found her laid out, spread, as she had not been for such a long time now, for me to feast upon. It was like old times, except for this: where her expression had once been quizzical and challenging it was now sweet, and where her limbs had once been splayed wantonly, there was now a subtle hint of modesty in their disposition. She somehow seemed more compact than she used to be also, her breasts less extravagantly full, the swell of her belly less curved, the hairs between her legs less ungovernable. Do not mistake me: she was beautiful still, and voluptuous enough to satisfy the wildest fantasy of every man – but only one at a time. Yes, that’s what was different – she was not spread as a banquet this morning, she was spread as a wedding breakfast. She was enough, she was more than enough, she was plenty for me; but she was only for me, and there was nothing left over. For the first time since I’d met her at Fitzpiers’s party and knew her only as Gertrude Bugler – no, earlier than that, for the first time since I had seen her elusive reflection in every girl I had desired, in every one of those dreams of beauty which she had persistently refused to accept were premonitions only of her – now, this morning, at last, I could feel that she was mine. It didn’t matter whether or not I was mistaken. It didn’t signify what Camilla might have had in her mind. The important thing was that this was what I felt, and that no sooner did I feel it than I knew I didn’t want it. There and then and once and for all I understood what I never had wanted and never would want – something that was just for me.