QUOTE : What she loved about Simon was his pleasure, his natural effervescence. After a life of minimal satisfactions she discovered, marvelling, that it was possible to be confident, expectant, at ease. Or rather that it was possible for Simon to be all of these things. If one is unaware of fatality it is possible to delight in happy accidents. That was her status, and it suited him perfectly. She supposed that she was an ideal mistress, tactfully present, just as tactfully absent; she also knew that the condition of a mistress was somehow subject to deterioration, that there came a time when reproaches would be aired, or an unseemly curiosity would surface.