The Prodigal Parents by Sinclair Lewis

Men at the dangerous age, between forty-five and sixty, occasionally do land in court and have to writhe over their letters beginning 'Sweetest little earwig', but most of them have not only forgotten how to make love but forgotten that there ever has been so extraordinary a mania as that in which competent young males believe that some run-of-the-mill female, of a physique set forth in the anatomy books without any deception or anything up the sleeve, a young woman with toothaches, freckles, the hives, and admitted ignorance of Bach and bio-chemistry, is a new Helen of Troy.

Fred was of the more fortunate fraction. He exalted Hazel, not as a being of fire, ice and chronic hysteria, but as a companion true as bread and salt.