After all, Fanshaw was thinking, does it bring any more to kick against the pricks? A certain position in the world ... He could hear his mother's tremulous voice: Your beautiful, lovely career. Perhaps it's best for Wenny that he died. Wenny grown old, sodden, drunken, losing his fire and his good looks; Verlaine's last absinthe-haunted days; Lord Byron, a puffy-faced Don Juan; the verdict of history. Circumspectly, with infinite grace, they went about life in the eighteenth century, never headlong, half-cocked. Nan and I can be like that. "Delicious, isn't it, to smell this mixture of tea and violets?" he said. "I was thinking," said Nan, "How wonderful if he were only here. Isn't it silly?" "I was thinking of him too," said Fanshaw. And Wenny loved Nan. Yet, was it any more unbearable for him than just now when I looked in her eyes and a light like the light bursting out from the center in that Greco Nativity shot all through me? Never to have held a woman in your arms and kissed her. Pent up aching rivers ... Called for madder music and for stronger wine. The redhaired woman leaned over to put a plate of toasted muffins on the table. Her round breasts hung heavy against the thin muslin of her blouse There was a faint rancid smell from her armpits. She doesn't wear corsets; sloppy that modern style. Here comes the bride, here comes the bride... Make a formal declaration. A marriage license engraved with cupids and hearts. Wobbling from side to side ... Sukie Smith and I walking round the block singing that one Fourth, smell of lindens, and people laughing at us and asking if we meant it, until Mother stopped us. Here come the groom, straight as a broom! "What a comfort tea is, Nan. I feel my tongue getting loose again. I wish we could talk about ourselves a little." "I hate it above anything, but let's ... Do you know, Fanshaw, I think sometimes that the more people see of each other the less they get to know. You can tell a stranger anything, but a friend ..." "It's awfully hard to say anything about what I really feel ... If we only had the Eighteenth Century code of badinage." "On ne badine pas avec l'amour." Fanshaw felt something like terror chilling his spine. He was tapping with a teaspoon on the table. Nan looked straight at him with narrowed eyes. "That's what I meant, Nan, I ..." "But why not after all?... Why not play with love to keep it from playing with us?" cried Nan wildly. The radiance of her eyes hurt like a too bright light. "O, Nan, what are we going to do about ourselves, you and I?" "Fanshaw, whatever happens, remember that my music is terribly important to me." "But life is more important to us than anything."