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 His decorous pace spaced away streets interesting with darkness and as he walked he marveled that he could be inwardly so despairing, yet outwardly the same as ever. I wonder if it does show on me? he thought. It is because I am getting old, that women are not attracted to me. Yet, I know any number of men of my age and more, who get women easily. or say they do It is something I do not possess, something I have never had

And soon he would be married again. Mr. Talliaferro, seeing freedom and youth deserting him again, had known at first a clear, sharp regret, almost a despair, realizing that marriage this time would be a climacteric, that after this he would be definitely no longer young; and a final flare of freedom and youth had surged in him like a dying flame. But now as he walked dark streets beneath the hot heavy sky and the mad wilting gardenias of stars, feeling empty and a little tired and hearing his grumbling skeleton—that smug and dour and unshakable comrade who loves so well to say I told you so—he found himself looking forward to marriage with a thin but definite relief as a solution to his problem. Yes, he told himself, sighing again, chastity is expected of married men. Or, at least they don’t lose caste by it

But it was unbearable to believe that he had never had the power to stir women, that he had been always a firearm unloaded and unaware of it. No, it’s something I can do, or say, that I have not yet discovered. As he turned into the quiet street in which he lived he saw two people in a doorway, embracing. He hurried on.

In his rooms at last he slowly removed his coat and hung it neatly in a closet without being aware that he had performed the rite at all, then from his bathroom he got a metal machine with a handpump attached, and he quartered the room