Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/219

 was necessary to think of what he would say next. He had always in such circumstances managed to feign high rapture, to his temporary companion's entire satisfaction, as he believed; but each adventure left him disappointed. It had not roused in him the overwhelming emotions lovers had in books, nor anything resembling these emotions; and that was what he had wanted, and had not ever realized, until the coming of Ettarre

He had made love, as a prevalent rule, to married women—allured, again, by bookish standards, which advanced the commerce of Lancelot with Guinevere, or of Paolo Malatesta with his brother's wife, as the supreme type of romantic passion. On more practical grounds, Kennaston preferred married women, partly because they were less stupid to converse with in general, and in particular did not bring up the question of marrying you; and in part because the husband in the background helped the situation pictorially—this notion also now seemed to be of literary origin—besides furnishing an unfailing topic of conversation. For unfaithful or wavering wives, to Kennaston's finding, peculiarly