“Doesn’t hurt to talk about her?”

“Lord, no! Because I wasn’t given fairy stories when I was little, I took them seriously when I was twenty-three.”

“Puppy love.”

“It went a little deeper than that.”

“But you don’t hate women?”

“No. I never hated the woman who deceived me. I was terribly sorry for her.”

“For having lost so nice a husband?”—with a bit of malice. 109

He greeted this with laughter.

“It is written,” she observed, “that we must play the fool sometime or other.”

“Have you ever played it?”