two years, during which he lived in our flat in Paris, whether we
were there or not. He studied painting at Julien's, or some such
place. . . .

That fellow had his hands always in the pockets of his odious,
square-shouldered, broad-hipped, American coats, and his dark
eyes were always full of ominous appearances. He was, besides,
too fat. Why, I was much the better man. . . .

And I daresay Florence would have given me the better. She
showed signs of it. I think, perhaps, the enigmatic smile with
which she used to look back at me over her shoulder when she
went into the bathing place was a sort of invitation. I have
mentioned that. It was as if she were saying: "I am going in here. I
am going to stand so stripped and white and straight--and you are
a man. . . ." Perhaps it was that. . . .

No, she cannot have liked that fellow long. He looked like sallow
putty. I understand that he had been slim and dark and very
graceful at the time of her first disgrace. But, loafing about in
Paris, on her pocket-money and on the allowance that old
Hurlbird made him to keep out of the United States, had given
him a stomach like a man of forty, and dyspeptic irritation on top
of it. God, how they worked me! It was those two between them
who really elaborated the rules. I have told you something about
them--how I had to head conversations, for all those eleven years,
off such topics as love, poverty, crime, and so on. But, looking
over what I have written, I see that I have unintentionally misled
you when I said that Florence was never out of my sight. Yet that
was the impression that I really had until just now. When I come