"I agree with you," Simon said. "Sometimes convention restricts you and doesn't allow you to live the fullest life. You should then flaunt convention by all means, don't you think?"
"I do. I do."
He sighed gratefully. The seed had been planted. He now had to cultivate it for three weeks. A word here, a gesture there, a suggestion, twenty-one days of marital bliss, of gaining her confidence, of impressing her with everything he did.
"Well," he said, "shall we go upstairs?"
He watched the color rise from Jane-Marie's throat and soon suffuse her face. "I was thinking Mr. and Mrs. Busby might want to play some bridge—"
"There are other nights," he said. He scattered the embers of the burning logs with the poker and went into the dining room after the bottle of champagne. With Jane-Marie at his side he climbed the stairs.
The shower had stopped. He could hear Jane-Marie humming to herself in a nervous falsetto. He didn't know whether to get under the covers or not, and finally decided Jane-Marie would be more at ease if he did. He had already combed his hair and brushed his teeth.
At last, she came. She was lovely, his wife, in a daring black negligee. She stood there in it for a long, wonderful moment, then plunged the room into darkness.
You could be a newlywed over and over again, Simon thought happily. You could taste the joys of brand new parenthood not once but a hundred times. You could see the kids off to school on that memorable first day as often as you liked, see your grandchildren that first glorious time through the glass window also as often as you wished, or taste many times of an old, established relationship which was yet mysteriously new, despite the gray hairs and conditioned familiarity.