Her box of confidences

When one unlocks a woman's body, her box of confidences also spills. (You should try 'em yourself one time, women I mean.) Might this be connected to their hopelessness at cards? After the Act, I am happier just lying still, but Jocasta talked, impulsively, as if to bury our big black secret under littler grey ones. Learnt Ayrs contracted his syphilis at a bordello in Copenhagen in 1915 during an extended separation and has not pleasured his wife since that year; after Eva's birth, the doctor told Jocasta she could never conceive another child. She is v. selective about her occasional affairs, but unapologetic about her right to conduct same. She insisted that she still loves Ayrs. I grunted, dubiously. That love loves fidelity, she riposted, is a myth woven by men from their insecurities.

— from Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell.