I smiling wife do promise these things. Newly identified, do I smother my childhood and my father’s name, as my mother smothered her own? Is my cordial smile artificial? The light mock light?… Cordelia refused to be falsely cordial to her father. Whose smile? Is the smile Society’s Giant pleasure at its Vesuvian power to force me into Custom’s lair, or sunshine to warm my cordial acquiescence? There are no cords in cordiality.†
