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means of language."
     
    Which is longer--an airplane or a one-act play?
     
    Which do I prefer--satisfaction or joy? His thinking was getting woolly.
    He made a disgusted noise, then looked quickly at the bed to see whether
    he had disturbed her. She slept on. Good.
     
    Out in the street, a gray Rolls-Royce pulled up at the curb a hundred
    yards away. Nobody got out. Tim looked more closely, and saw the driver
    open a newspaper. A chauffeur, perhaps, picking someone up at
    six-thirty? A businessman who had traveled overnight and arrived too
    early? Tim could not read the license plate. But he could see that the
    driver was a big man; big enough to make the interior of the car seem as
    cramped as a Mini.
     
    He turned his mind back to his dilemma. What do we do in politics, he
    thought, when we face two forceful but conflicting demands? The answer
    came immediately: we choose a course of action which; really or
    apparently, meets both needs.
     
    The parallel was obvious. He would stay married to Julia and have an
    affair with this girl. It seemed a very political solution, and it
    pleased him He lit another cigarette and thought about the future. It
    was a pleasant pastime. There would be many more nights here at the
    flat; the occasional weekend in a small hotel in the country; perhaps
    even a fortnight in the sun, on some discreet little beach in North
    Africa or the West Indies. She would be sensational in a bikini.
     
    Other hopes paled beside these. He was tempted by the thought that his
    early life had been wasted; but he knew the idea to be extravagant. Not
    wasted, then; but it was as if he had spent his youth working out
    long-division sums and never discovered differential calculus.
     
    He decided to talk to her about the problem and his solution. She would
    say it could not be done, and he would tell her that making compromises
    work was his special talent.
     
    How should he begin? "Darling, I want to do this again, often." That
    seemed all right. What would she say? "So would I," or. "Call me at this
    number," or: "Sorry, Timmy, I'm a one-night girl."
     
    No, not that; it wasn't possible. Last night had been good for her, too.
    He was special for her.
     
    She had said so.
     
    He stood up and put out his cigarette. I'll go over to the bed, he
    thought; and I'll pull the blankets off her gently, and look at her
    nakedness for a few moments; then I'll lie beside her, and kiss her
    belly, and her thighs, and her breasts, until she wakes; and then I'll
    make love to her again.
     
    He looked away from her and out of the window, savoring the
    anticipation. The Rolls was still there, like a gray slug in the gutter.
    For some reason it bothered him. He put it out of his mind, and went
    over to wake the girl.
     
    Felix Laski did not have much money, despite the fact that he was very
    rich. His wealth took the form of shares, land, buildings, and
    occasionally more nebulous assets like half a film script or one third
    of an invention for making instant potato chips. Newspapers were fond of
    saying that if all his riches were turned into cash, he would have so
    many millions of pounds; and Laski was equally fond of pointing out that
    to turn his riches into cash would be close to impossible.
     
    He walked from Waterloo railway station to the City, because he believed
    that laziness caused heart attacks in men of his age. This concern with
    his health was foolish, for he was as fit a fifty-year-old as could be
    found within the Square Mile. Just short of six feet tall, with a chest
    like the stern of a battleship, he was about as vulnerable to cardiac
    arrest as a young ox.
     
    He cut a striking figure, walking across Blackfriars Bridge in the
    brittle sunshine of the early morning. His clothes were expensive, from
    the blue silk shirt to the handmade shoes; by City standards he was a
    dandy. This was because every man in the village where Laski had been
    born wore cotton dungarees and a cloth cap; now good clothes