'But she never sees you.'

'I'm nothing if not efficient,' he said, shortly. 'When I go home I deal with everything. The gas heaters, and the electricity bill and where to buy a cheap carpet, and what to do about the children's school. Everything.' When she did not reply he insisted: 'I've told you before, you're a snob, Ella. You can't stand the fact that maybe it's how she likes to live.'

'No, I can't. And I don't believe it. No woman in the world wants to live without love.'

'You're such a perfectionist. You're an absolutist. You measure everything against some kind of ideal that exists in your head, and if it doesn't come up to your beautiful notions then you condemn it out of hand. Or you pretend to yourself that it's beautiful even when it isn't.'

Ella thought: He means us; and Paul was already going on: 'For instance-Muriel might just as well say of you: Why on earth does she put up with being my husband's mistress, what security is there in that? And it's not respectable.'

'Oh, security!'

'Oh, quite so. You say, scornfully, Oh, security! Oh, respectability! But Muriel wouldn't. They're very important to her. They're very important to most people.'

It occurred to Ella that he sounded angry and even hurt. It occurred to her that he identified himself with his wife (and yet all his tastes, when he was with her, Ella, were different) and that security and respectability were important to him also.

She was silent, thinking: If he really likes living like that, or at least, needs it, it would explain why he's always dissatisfied with me. The other side of the sober respectable little wife is the smart, gay, sexy mistress. Perhaps he really would like it if I were unfaithful to him and wore tarty clothes. Well I won't. This is what I am, and if he doesn't like it he can lump it.