This was the climate he created and to which Lillian responded, the yieldingness of the body, relaxed gestures, yielding to flow, seeking pleasure and being nourished with it, giving it to others. When something threatened his pleasure, how skillful he was at evasion. He had created something which on the surface seemed untainted by the anxiety of his time, yet Lillian felt there was a flaw in it. She did not know what it was.

The flaw she was to discover was that his world was like a child's world, depending on others' care, others' devotions, others' taking on the burdens.

He received a letter from his first wife, telling him about his daughter now fourteen years old, and showing exceptional gifts for painting. At first Jay wept: "I cannot help her." He remembered saying to her when she was five years old: "Now remember, I am your brother, not your father." The idea of fatherhood repulsed him. It threatened his desire for everlasting freedom and youthfulness.

"Let her come and share our life," said Lillian.

"No," said Jay. "I want to be free. I have too much work to do. I have to take the frames off my paintings. I want them to become a part of the wall, a continuous frieze. My colors are about to fly off the edge, and I don't want restraint. Let them fly!"

While Lillian cooked dinner in the small kitchen off the studio, he fell asleep. When he awakened he had forgotten his daughter and his guilt. "Is dinner ready? Is the wine good?"

How I wish his indifference were contagious, thought Lillian. He can forget his daughter, and I cannot forget my children. Every night I leave Jay's side to go and say goodnight to my children across the ocean. I have to give Jay the same kind of love I gave my children. As if I knew no other expression of love outside of care and devotion.

She spent all her time consoling the friends he had misused, paying his debts, preventing him from paying too high a price for his rebellions.

When they first met he was proofreading in a newspaper office. His paintings were not selling yet. The work irritated his eyes. He would come to his room and the first thing he would do was to wash his inflamed eyelids. Lillian watched him, watched the red-rimmed eyes, usually laughing, and now withered by fatigue, and watering. These eyes which he needed for his work, wasted on proofreading under weak lights on greyish paper. These eyes he needed to drink in the world and all its profusion of images.

"Jay," said Lillian, extending a glass of red wine. "Drink to the end of your job at the paper. You will never have to do it again. I earn enough for both of us when I play every night."