Where other men took ten days to the Hills, Strickland took leave for what he called shikar, put on the disguise that appealed to him at the time, stepped down into the brown crowd, and was swallowed up for a while.

[T]he work on animal heat, also strongly influenced by Priestley, led to the oxidation-respiration papers by Lavoisier and his collaborators, Laplace and Seguin.

This moment of disrobing might be a bit of eroticism in an otherwise almost anti-erotic piece about sexuality, but it is defrayed by her white cotton girl's underpants and 50s-style cotton bra. She is made to look too schoolgirlish here to be really provocative.

The painter looked up at the ceiling. He listened to the woman's television and wondered what to do. He got out of bed. The painter started the coffee pot. He went into the bathroom to take his morning constitutional. The poor painter could still hear the woman's television. Christ, how he hated her.