Twilight Sleep
disillusioned idler who killed time with cards and drink and motor-speeding. She didn't believe he ever opened a book nowadays: he was living on the dwindling capital of his early enthusiasms. But, as for what people called his "fastness," she knew it was merely the inevitable opposition to Aggie's virtues. And it wasn't as if there had been children. Nona always ached for the bewildered progeny suddenly bundled from one home to another when their parents embarked on a new conjugal experiment; she could never have bought her happiness by a massacre of innocents. But to be sacrificed to a sterile union—as sterile spiritually as physically—to miss youth and love because of Agnes Heuston's notion of her duty to the elderly clergyman she called God!
That woman he said he was going off with. . . Nona had pretended she didn't know, had opened incredulous eyes at the announcement. But of course she knew; everybody knew; it was Cleo Merrick. She had been "after him" for the last two years, she hadn't a rag of reputation to lose, and would jump at the idea of a few jolly weeks with a man like Heuston, even if he got away from her afterward. But he wouldn't—of course he never would! Poor Stan—Cleo Merrick's noise, her cheek, her vulgarity: how warm and life-giving they would seem as a change from the frigidarium he called home! She would hold him by her very cheapness: her recklessness would seem like generosity, her glitter like heat. Ah—how Nona could
