"It had been one of those peculiar relationships – common enough, or a by-product of alien circumstances? – like a broken figure of eight. She had fallen passionately in love with him; he married her with his mind elsewhere. She frustrated him physically, he disappointed her emotionally. Attachment frayed, they twisted away from each other. Yet her company became essential to him, and she accepted displacement for it. Tender and insensible, he certainly ended by loving her more than she did him, yet practically she gave up more for him, with only intermittent intensity of regret. When she was alive, he once said to her: ‘I wonder if you have ever really treated me as an equal.’ "
Part I
Part II
