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going to tell him you’re leaving?” I said. It had somehow sounded like that.
    “No, I’m not,” she said. “I’ll leave a letter.”
    “And how old is Hill,” I pressed her grimly.
    “Almost eleven.”
    “Almost eleven! Louisa, Louisa! Good heavens!”
    She looked back at me with a powerful New England stubbornness. “I know. That’s the worst part. But it can’t be helped.”
    I drew a deep breath. I was sitting there beside her on my Second Empire couch. For a moment I thought of reaching for her hand. But I knew better. She would have run. But good God! Even divorced, particularly because divorced, how could I countenance and be party to breaking up a marriage—especially this marriage? “Well, you know that I’m Harry’s friend,” I said tentatively. “Maybe one of his best ones.”
    “The best one,” she said.
    “Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” I said, making my voice cold and quite literary, as I’ve often had to do when rejecting manuscripts—though it always pains me. “I’m going to call Harry up on the phone, right now, and tell him what you’ve told me. Unless you promise me right here and now on your honor that you won’t leave Paris till you’ve talked this thing thoroughly through with Harry. And you must come and tell me that you have, afterwards!”
    “But that’s unfair!” she cried, “I came to you! That’s not fair at all. I came to you as a friend.”
    “Unfair or not unfair,” I said in my best tough-editor’s voice. “There’s no choice.”
    Louisa looked helpless, a little stunned. “You’d really tell him!” she said. “Then I guess I don’t have any choice then, do I?”
    “You do not,” I said. I reached out for the phone.
    “All right! All right! Don’t do that! I’ll promise!”
    “That’s on your New England honor,” I said.
    “It’s on my honor,” she said. “That’s enough.”
    “It is,” I said. “Now, you go on home and see Harry.”
    She sent young Hill over to stay with me that night. I assume that they had it out then. Young Hill, aged ten and a half was a little disgruntled.
    “What’s goin’ on at home?” he asked me with angry suspicion.
    “Why, nothing that I know of. Why?” I said.
    “Well, what’re they sendin’ me over here to stay with you for then? This is only the second time I’ve ever stayed at your house. And the other was when I was only a little kid.” He meant a year ago.
    “I just thought you might like to see your old Uncle Jack,” I said, “and have dinner with him for a change. So I asked your mother.”
    “Well, I think there’s somethin goin’ on,” Hill persisted.
    “Well, if there is, I don’t know about it. Look, I’ve got some great steaks. Or would you rather have a big hamburger steak?”
    “I like escargots. Have you got any escargots?”
    “You know damn well I haven’t got any escargots. All right. We’ll go out then. Down the block. Quasimodo has excellent escargots.”
    “Great!” Hill cried. “Fine! Oh, boy, do I love my Uncle Jack!” But afterwards, walking along the quaiside to the restaurant, he still looked at me narrowly, even sullenly, as if he suspected I knew something he had not been let in on. “I suppose you know about Dad’s girlfriends, don’t you?” he said finally. We were just crossing the rue Boutarel. It was one of those lovely, winey September Paris days. The restaurants were full or filling, but it was not yet dark. In the west behind the loom of Notre-Dame the sun had not yet lost its influence, and was shooting last rays up into that special Île de France fair-weather cloud structure.
    “Girlfriends?” I said. “Girlfriends? Do you mean lovers?”
    “I guess I mean lovers. Lots of them. He’s got loads of them. It’s pretty important. Not many fellows got so many.”
    “Where did you pick up all this nonsense?” We had almost reached the restaurant, I noted gratefully. I looked into its picture windows with their