IT SEEMED to me that during those last weeks we’d finally found a way of living together, one that made us both content. It was not conventional in this society and time, but not unusual either, and apparently it was what we both wanted, since we settled into it easily and it did work. I had lived on an either/or basis and had been constantly on edge. Now I’d come to another solution, one with which I felt satisfied because I had both relationships I wanted. My “experiment” seemed to have worked; a stable work life, a wife I loved, a mistress I found stimulating, each offering me different benefits. Wasn’t this the way many men lived, though they didn’t admit it? Even if it was in their imagination? I didn’t know what else would work for me, not after all that Molly and I had been through together. Or work for Molly either. She didn’t require of me now what I could not give her, and apparently what she did get from me was enough. She seemed to have finally come to some sort of resolution of her feelings, an acceptance of my nature, that I had different needs from hers, just as she had different needs from mine. So I was careful and she was contented.

I wondered why people make such a fuss about infidelity; sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps a marriage together.