QUOTE : Lovely.’ She called it a white lie to herself, and over the years it had come to have an almost cosy ring. Of course she loved him, so what else could she say? Sex was for men, after all. Women, nice women anyway, were not expected to care for it, but her own mother had intimated (the only time she had ever even remotely touched upon the subject) that it was the gravest possible mistake ever to refuse one’s husband. So she had never refused him and if, eighteen years ago, she had suffered some shock accompanied by acute pain when she discovered what actually happened, practice had dissolved these feelings into those merely of a patient distaste, and at the same time it was a way of proving her love which she felt must be right.