I am prepared to believe that a slightly impairs the palate, but think what it does to the soul. - Alec Waugh

There comes some time an end to all things, to the good and to the bad.

As military regulations state that it is the duty of every to make immediate and strenuous effort to escape, and as every man is at heart an adventurer, it is not surprising that our languid community was from time to time regaled by the rumours of impending sorties.

... Maugham would not have been the writer he became had his marriage been a success. Nor would Evelyn. He made his first trip to in the autumn of 1930; for six years he was on the move. Until his marriage had been annulled he could not remarry. Those six years of travel gave him the material he needed. He could not have taken a wife upon those travels, certainly not , who was delicate in health. A novelist to get the material he needs must travel alone or with another man. Had the Evelyns’ marriage been a success, he would, with his absorption in the world of fashion, have concentrated on social satires that might well have become brittle and superficial.
Did She-Evelyn subconsciously realize that? Her marriage to was short-lived, but she was genuinely in love with him at the beginning. Would she, though, have been prepared to let herself fall in love with him — there is always a point at which one can draw back — had she not felt that since the success of Decline and Fall she was cast in the wrong role? The “he-Evelyn, she- Evelyn, ‘Orphans of the Storm’ Idyll” had been one thing; it was quite another to be the wife, companion, confidante, counselor, and bastion of a great man of letters — the role that Laura Herbert was to fill later, so gladly, so proudly, so lovingly, and with so triumphant a success.