After the Fireworks by Aldous Huxley

DEL GRILLO, WAS IN Rome for that one night and had urgently summoned him to dine. His arrival was loud and exclamatory.
    â€œBest of all possible Dodos!” he cried, as he advanced with outstretched hands across the enormous baroque saloon. “What an age! But what a pleasure!”
    â€œAt last, Miles,” she said reproachfully; he was twenty minutes late.
    â€œBut I know you’ll forgive me.” And laying his two hands on her shoulders he bent down and kissed her. He made a habit of kissing all his women friends.
    â€œAnd even if I didn’t forgive, you wouldn’t care two pins.”
    â€œNot one.” He smiled his most charming smile. “But if it gives you the smallest pleasure, I’m ready to say I’d be inconsolable.” His hands still resting on her shoulders, he looked at her searchingly, at arm’s length. “Younger than ever,” he concluded.
    â€œI couldn’t look as young as you do,” she answered. “You know, Miles, you’re positively indecent. Like Dorian Gray. What’s your horrible secret?”
    â€œSimply Mr. Hornibrooke,” he explained. “The culture of the abdomen. So much more important than the culture of the mind.” Dodo only faintly smiled; she had heard the joke before. Fanning was sensitive to smiles; he changed the subject. “And where’s the marquis?” he asked.
    The marchesa shrugged her shoulders. Her husband was one of those dear old friends whom somehow one doesn’t manage to see anything of nowadays. “Filippo’s in Tanganyika,” she explained. “Hunting lions.”
    â€œWhile you hunt them at home. And with what success! You’ve bagged what’s probably the finest specimen in Europe this evening. Congratulations!”
    â€œMerci, cher maître!” * she laughed. “Shall we go in to dinner?”
    The words invited, irresistibly. “If only I had the right to answer: Oui, chère maîtresse! ” † Though as a matter of fact, he reflected, he had never really found her at all interesting in that way. A woman without temperament. But very pretty once—that time (how many years ago?) when there had been that picnic on the river at Bray, and he had drunk a little too much champagne. “If only!” he repeated; and then was suddenly struck by a grotesque thought. Suppose she were to say yes, now—now! “If only I had the right!”
    â€œBut luckily,” said Dodo, turning back towards him, as she passed through the monumental door into the dining-room, “luckily you haven’t the right. You ought to congratulate me on my immense good sense. Will you sit there?”
    â€œOh, I’ll congratulate. I’m always ready to congratulatepeople who have sense.” He unfolded his napkin. “And to condole.” Now that he knew himself safe, he could condole as much as he liked. “What you must have suffered, my poor sensible Dodo, what you must have missed!”
    â€œSuffered less,” she answered, “and missed more unpleasantnesses than the woman who didn’t have the sense to say no.”
    â€œWhat a mouthful of negatives! But that’s how sensible people always talk about love—in terms of negatives. Never of positives; they ignore those and go about sensibly avoiding the discomforts. Avoiding the pleasures and exultations too, poor sensible idiots! Avoiding all that’s valuable and significant. But it’s always like that. The human soul is a fried whiting. (What excellent red mullet this is, by the way! Really excellent.) Its tail is in its mouth. All progress finally leads back to the beginning again. The most sensible people—dearest Dodo, believe me—are the most foolish. The most intellectual are the stupidest. I’ve never met a really good metaphysician, for example, who wasn’t in one way or another bottomlessly stupid. And as for the really