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was much to be done. We were making a new life. It was not the Old West and there was no frontier but we were making a new life, starting from scratch. There was no thought of “romance” or “sex” but only of making a new life. We knew what we were doing.
    The New Woman is the survivor of the catastrophe and the death of old worlds—like the woman in the next room. The worst thing that can happen to her has happened. The worst thing that can happen to me has happened. We are both survivors.
    What do survivors do?
    Knock.
    But she does not reply. Perhaps she did not survive. I’m surer of the catastrophe than I am of her survival.

3
    YOU WERE ASKING me how I felt when I discovered Margot had been unfaithful to me. Yes, that is very important if you are to understand what happened later.
    First, you must understand that the usual emotions which one might consider appropriate—shock, anger, shame—do not apply. True, there is a kind of dread at the discovery but there is also a curious sense of expectancy, a secret sweetness at the core of the dread.
    I can only compare it to the time I discovered my father was a crook. It was a long time ago. I was a child. My mother was going shopping and had sent me up to swipe some of his pocket money from his sock drawer. For a couple of years he had had a political appointment with the insurance commission with a “reform” administration. He had been accused of being in charge of parceling out the state’s insurance business and taking kickbacks from local agencies. Of course we knew that could not be true. We were an honorable family. We had nothing to do with the Longs. We may have lost our money, Belle Isle was half in ruins, but we were an honorable family with an honorable name. Much talk of dirty politics. The honor of the family won out and even the opposition gave up. So I opened the sock drawer and found not ten dollars but ten thousand dollars stuck carelessly under some argyle socks.
    What I can still remember is the sight of the money and the fact that my eye could not get enough of it. There was a secret savoring of it as if the eye were exploring it with its tongue. When there is something to see, some thing, a new thing, there is no end to the seeing. Have you ever watched onlookers at the scene of violence, an accident, a killing, a dead or dying body in the street? Their eyes shift to and fro ever so slightly, scanning, trying to take it all in. There is no end to the feast.
    At the sight of the money, a new world opened up for me. The old world fell to pieces—not necessarily a bad thing. Ah, then, things are not so nice, I said to myself. But you see, that was an important discovery. For if there is one thing harder to bear than dishonor, it is honor, being brought up in a family where everything is so nice, perfect in fact, except of course oneself.
    You nod. But no, wait. The discovery about Margot involved something quite different. There was a sense of astonishment, of discovery, of a new world opening up, but the new world was totally unknown. Where does one go from here? I felt like those two scientists—what were their names?—who did the experiment on the speed of light and kept getting the wrong result. It just would not come out right. The wrong result was unthinkable. Because if it were true, all physics went out the window and one had to start from scratch. It took Einstein to comprehend that the wrong answer might be right.
    One has first to accept and believe what one knows theoretically. One must see for oneself. Einstein had to be sure about those other two fellows before he took the trouble to take the next logical step.
    One has to know for sure before doing anything. I had to be sure about Margot, about what she had done and was doing now. I had to be absolutely certain.
    It was getting dark. The movie crew had gone. Margot, Merlin, Jacoby, and Raine would be back for supper. Elgin came with my