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that's how we thought of him. Perhaps he was only thirty, but we were just teen-agers.”
    “What was his name?” Mulheisen said.
    “You can't be serious,” she said. “That was an eternity ago. He was German. I imagine he's still there. It was all over within a few weeks, despite Jane's insistence that she was in love forever and that she would run away to Italy with him. Anyway, that's how she lost her cherry.”
    “My, my,” Mulheisen muttered. His mocking tone did not seem to affect the woman's flippant manner. In fact, he could have sworn that her smile was mocking him. He thought that she must think him terribly stuffy.
    “Let's see,” she went on, “after Dieter there was a suave Continental type, ‘a real gentleman,’ she called him. She met him in Zurich. An older man indeed. I don't think you'll want his name either. And there was another older man, in London. He even came over to Lausanne to see her. A creepy fellow, lusting after young girls. Just the Humbert Humbert type.”
    “What was his name?” Mulheisen said. He took out a notebook and pen.
    “I haven't the faintest notion,” Lou Spencer said. She stood by the fireplace, caressing a glass bell that covered an intricate clockwork of gears and balls.
    “So she liked older men,” Mulheisen said.
    “I never thought of it that way, until this moment, but I suppose that's true. Of course, it's easy to make too much of incidental details. Her husband, for instance, is ten years older than she. Perhaps it all has something to do with her father. He was quite a dynamic character who must have had a tremendous impression on her, especially since her mother died when Jane was just an infant.”
    “Did you ever meet her father?”
    “Occasionally. He was very busy. He didn't spend much time with Jane. Rather paradoxical, perhaps, to have this powerful father figure that alternately ignores you and then dotes on you. It must be unsettling.”
    “Well, what about other men?” Mulheisen said. “Were there many, over the years?”
    Lou Spencer looked rather concerned. “I don't know if I should tell you this. It seems scandalous, even to me. And dangerous, too.”
    Mulheisen was interested. “What is it?”
    “She told me she used to go into strange bars and pick up men. Total strangers. They'd go to a hotel. It seemed to me like she was taking a terrible chance. I mean, not only VD, but how can you tell what some guy sitting in a bar might do? She laughed at me. She said it was great fun. She really enjoyed the power she had over men.”
    “When did she do this? Where?”
    “It was when she was at Vassar that she started. She wouldgo to New York to stay with some relative. I think she was twenty-two or -three at the time. And then later, she said she had done it in Detroit, as well as almost every large city she was ever in.”
    “Do you think she was still doing it?”
    “No. No, I'm certain she didn't, not after she was married. I never knew anything about it, you see, until just a year or so ago. I have to confess, I was shocked. But she just laughed. She said it was a long time ago, before she married Arthur.”
    “Maybe lately she had a more steady boyfriend,” Mulheisen said.
    “I don't think so. She didn't seem so interested in sex in the last year or so. I don't think she was sleeping with anyone.”
    “Including her husband?”
    Lou shrugged. “How do I know? I shouldn't be saying all these things. It's just hearsay and speculation.”
    “What kind of life did she lead?” Mulheisen wanted to know.
    “A rich woman's life. Go shopping, go to the country club, go to dinner, go to South America. I don't know what she did. I don't think she had many friends.”
    “Why is that?”
    “Most of the women who would have been her friends are married. If you were a married woman, would you want someone who looked like Jane hanging around? Of course,” she added, “if Jane had chosen to be around, I'm sure she would have had more