All evil comes from the old. They grow fat on ideas and young men die of them.

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

Young men, hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young.

Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books.

Some men like to make a little garden out of life and walk down a path.

I don't know what you do about sex and I don't want to know, but this is not the way to go about it. You're what – fifty-two? Do you think a young girl finds any pleasure in going to bed with a man of that age? Do you think she finds it good to watch you in the middle of your...? Do you ever think about that?"

He is silent.

"Don't expect sympathy from me, David, and don't expect sympathy from anyone else either. No sympathy, no mercy, not in this day and age. Everyone's hand will be against you, and why not? Really, how could you?"

The old tone has entered, the tone of the last years of their married life: passionate recrimination. Even Rosalind must be aware of that. Yet perhaps she has a point. Perhaps it is the right of the young to be protected from the sight of their elders in the throes of passion. That is what whores are for, after all: to put up with the ecstasies of the unlovely.