"See if you can't sleep, Eric," she whispered, as he opened twitching lids to take stock of her.
Pity, or some kind of maternal love, then, survived his defeat.…
"Average man is a match for average woman, eighteen chances to eighteen, but zero always turns up in woman's favour. Man, being a philosopher and far less interested in woman (who is an incident) than woman is interested in him (who is her life), would cheerfully go on playing with the odds always slightly against him, if he had a clear idea of the value and significance of zero. But zero is woman inexplicable—something fantastically loyal or shiveringly perfidious, savagely cruel or quixotically self-sacrificing, something that is primitive, non-moral and resolved to win at all costs. In the sex-gamble, zero is more than a thirty-six to one chance; it is Poushkin's Dame de Pique and turns up thirty-six times to one. And man shews his indifference or his greatness of soul by continuing to play, by rising imperturbably triumphant over zero.… Or perhaps he shews that he is an eternal sex-amateur.…"—From the Diary of Eric Lane.
CHAPTER SEVEN
EDUCATION FOR THOSE OF RIPER YEARS
"Verily when an author can approve his wife she was deserving of a better fate."
Leonard Merrick: "When Love Flies Out o' the Window."