xxv

solid silver quarters

what marriage offers - and what fidelity is meant to protect - is the possibility of moments when what we have chosen and what we desire are the same. such a convergence obviously cannot be continuous. no relationship can continue very long at its highest emotional pitch. but fidelity prepares us for the return of these moments, which give us the highest joy we can know; that of union, communion, atonement (in the root sense of at-one-ment)

Wendell Berry