“All right, Charley,” Elena said, sitting up in bed, her face filling with hard wisdom and hatred of him, until she was beautiful to his eyes, and more than a little frightening. “Now, you listen to me,” she said. “You were the one who arranged everything tonight, and yet you call me a pig. If it had turned out better for you, you would be loving me all over again, you would be telling me how wonderful I am.”

He was weary, he was exhausted—a defeated man cannot be asked to have the moral bravery of a victor. So Eitel turned on Elena, and in his best accent he said, “Must you worship stupidity as if it were your patron saint?”