The second year in Bronxville she began buying books of poetry all the time and wearing clothes that were thought a little strange for Westchester, and the third year they went through what he later thought of as their quarreling phase—a series of fights so frequent and bitter that when it ended, in the inevitability of mutual exhaustion, they decided they had reached a new maturity, had learned at last to live together as adults. And for the rest of the decade that changed them from nearly forty to nearly fifty they rarely quarreled at all. Perhaps they had not spent as much time together, perhaps they had fewer common interests, but at least they had not quarreled. And at least he had tried; he had always been gentle with her and tried to understand her. Once he had even bought and read, in private, one of those sensible books on menopause, feeling a little foolish about it afterwards, but reassured, because all the cases it described were real neurotic types and none of its clinical dogma could possibly have applied to Alice. And all along, right up until last night, he would have said they had a settled, well-adjusted marriage, imperfect as all marriages, but basically sound. And then quite suddenly it had all fallen away. She was standing in the middle of the living room when he came in, her face strangely white, and her suitcases were standing beside her. “George, I’m all packed. I wanted to be out before you came home because I wanted to avoid a scene. I was going to leave a note.” He sat down on the couch and looked at her, still wearing his hat and holding his briefcase. “Oh, George, you’re not shocked. Please don’t pretend you’re shocked. You know exactly what kind of a marriage we’ve had for the past five—my God, the past ten years.”