The continued propinquity of another human being cramps the style after a time unless that person is somebody you think you love. Then the burden becomes intolerable at once.This may seem to be carrying monasticism to unbearable extremes, but dry your tears. What is frowned upon is cohabitation rather than sex.

If sex were still a private matter, it would require little or no mention. This,alas, is not the case. Recently it has been given a great deal of uncoverage in the press, on television, and in the movies. The people who raise the loudest and most persistent objection to this are the moralists. Stylists can never concern themselves with ethics, but they too cannot help forming opinions about excessive sexual license as about any other misuse of freedom. In becoming a public pastime and a topic for incessant conversation, sex has not increased its style. Indeed much of what it formerly possessed it has lost.

Instant sex is a time- and labor-saving device, but as leisure and energy are what we now have to excess, this is no recommendation. For flavor it will never supersede unpleasant truths that the permissive society has brought to light. We are now all dangerously aware that sexual intercourse is a bit of a bore. What kept the "divine woman" lark going for all those long, dark centuries was not an unquenchable erection but romance. If this had not been so, how could the troubadours of the Middle Ages have managed to hog all that peak-hour viewing time?

Romance was the style in sex.