“Sometimes, especially when Lol was not at home, John Bedford must have been struck by this impeccable order. By this taste, too, this cold, ready-made taste. The decoration and furnishing of the bedrooms and living room were the faithful facsimile of model rooms displayed in store windows, and Lol's garden was the replica of all the other gardens in Uxbridge. Lol was imitating someone, but who? the others, all the others, as many people as possible. On afternoons when she was not there, didn't her house become the empty stage upon which was performed the soliloquy of some absolute passion whose meaning remained unrevealed? And wasn't it inevitable that John Bedford was sometimes afraid of it? That it was here that he had to be on the lookout for the first sign of thaw, of the winter ice breaking? Who knows? Who knows if he heard it one day?”

—Jack Hold