Raphael Saint George and the Dragon painting

Raphael Saint George and the Dragon paintingPablo Picasso The Old Guitarist paintingPablo Picasso Girl Before a Mirror painting
him might be the same as your motive in mating with Croaker, or Mrs. Sear, or -- or Harold Bray, for all I know. . ."
This last I tossed in off-handedly, but I was unspeakably pleased to hear her protest that she had not "united" with Bray even once, whatever he might have said to the contrary.
"He hasn't said anything, as far as I know," I confessed.
"He'd betternot. I know he's a great man and all, butugh!"
I was emboldened to add, less from vanity than by way of firming my own resolve, that even if I should summon her myself, in my capacity as Grand Tutor of the Western Campus, and bid her conceive a child by me, say, to carry on my work when I should pass away -- even then, and knowing as she must that such undergraduate whimsies as the incest-taboo were void before that grand imperative, she was to refuse me.
Wide-eyed she whispered: "Okay."
"I do love you, you know, Anastasia," I said, not at all abashed now. "And I'm not a bit sorry about the Memorial Service in the Living Room. . ."
"You aren't?"