“No. And I never want to. But I see their mink coats lying in the hall when I go out. And don’t think for a minute I feel the least bit sorry for them. I would rather go to a whore-house myself. But why should he be successful with women? He’s stupid and he subscribes to Esquire. Now I am extremely intelligent and once you get used to my face, I’m not really ugly. But do I have any success with women? Can I ever be sure of them? If I am sure of them, it’s because they’re too uninviting to be unfaithful and then they bore me to death. That middle-aged French baggage I told you about won’t stir from my door-step and she annoys me so much I could strangle her without the least remorse. But on the other hand I never have been so in love as I am with Kakosan Yoshida and I can’t trust her. She lies and deceives me and when I most want her she doesn’t show up. And that was the way it was with you. When I specifically wanted to do nothing else in the world but drink Budweiser draft with you at Red’s, you wouldn’t do it.”

We had been sitting in the dark for sometime and now he turned on the lamp. He was as angry, I saw, as he had been on the way to the Brunsons’ house, but I was equally angry and rose to go. As I reached for my coat, he grasped my hand. “Don’t go,” he pleaded.

“Oh, you make me sick,” I said.

“I know it. I’m sorry. But please don’t go.”

“But your friend is coming. Your beautiful Japanese lotus flower.”

“She won’t come, and if she does, what good will it do me? I want to ask you a question, Sonie. Please sit down again and drink some more sherry or I’ll make you coffee if you’d rather. The thing is this, do you think it will work, my going to France this way? I mean, if I don’t marry Kakosan? I was joking when I said I might marry Andrée, she’s impossible. Do you think it would work if I went by myself?”

I could not have answered his question even if I had had the time, for I did not know what it was he wanted except to live in Paris for a year and for that length of time to have a holiday from Mr. Morgan and his kind. At that moment there was a delicate triple knock on the door and Nathan rushed to unlock it and to admit his Japanese mistress, Kakosan Yoshida.