The Cream of the Jest

He would sometimes think of the women who had loved him; and would speculate, with some wistfulness, if it was invariably true, as with his own amorous traffic, that love both kept and left its victims strangers to each other? He knew so little of these soft-lipped girls and women, when everything was said…

Yet there had been – he counted – yes, time had known eight chaste and comely gentlewomen, in all, who had "given themselves to him," as the hackneyed phrase was. These eight affairs, at any event, had conformed to every tradition, and had been as thorough-going as might romantically be expected: but nothing much seemed to have come of them; and he did not feel in the upshot very well acquainted with their heroines. His sole emotion toward them nowadays was that of mild dislike. But six of them – again to utilize a venerable conjunction of words – had "deceived their husbands" for the caresses of an impecunious Kennaston; and the other two had anticipatorily "deceived" the husbands they took later: so that they must, he reflected, have loved Felix Kennaston sincerely. He was quite certain, though, that he had never loved any one of them as he had always wanted to love. No one of these women had given him what he sought in vain. Kennaston had felt this lack of success dispiritedly when, with soft arms about him, it was necessary to think of what he would say next. He had always in such circumstances managed to feign high rapture, to his temporary companion's entire satisfaction, as he believed; but each adventure left him disappointed. It had not roused in him the overwhelming emotions lovers had in books, nor anything resembling these emotions: and that was what he had wanted, and had not ever realized, until the coming of Ettarre…

He had made love, as a prevalent rule, to married women – allured, again, by bookish standards, which advanced the commerce of Lancelot with Guinevere, or of Paolo Malatesta with his brother's wife, as the supreme type of romantic passion. On more practical grounds, Kennaston preferred married women, partly because they were less stupid to converse with in general, and in particular did not bring up the question of marrying you; and in part because the husband in the background helped the situation pictorially – this notion also now seemed to be of literary origin – besides furnishing an unfailing topic of conversation. For unfaithful or wavering wives, to Kennaston's finding, peculiarly delighted in talking about their husbands; and in such prattle failed either to exhibit the conventional remorse toward, or any very grave complaint against, the discussed better-half. The inconsistency would have worried Kennaston's sense of justice, had not these husbands always been so transparently certain of Kennaston's insignificance… Although judging of necessity only from his own experience, Kennaston was unable conscientiously to approve of adulterous love-affairs: they tended too soon toward tediousness; and married women seemed horribly quick to become matter-of-fact in the details of a liaison, and ready almost to confuse you with the husband.