I thought back over my history with women. 'Miles,' I said, 'I think you have an exaggerated notion of my charms.'

'As I told you once before, old man,' he said, 'you're much too modest. Dangerously modest.'

'I once took out a pretty waitress in Columbus, Ohio, for three months,' I said, 'and all she ever let me do was hold her hand in the movies.'

'You're moving up in class now. Douglas,' Fabian said. 'The women you're going to meet from now on are attracted by the rich, so inevitably they are surrounded by older men, men who are engaged almost twenty-four hours a day in great affairs, who have very little time for women. Along with them there are the men who do have time for women but whose masculinity very often is ambiguous, to say the least. Or whose interests are transparently pecuniary. Your waitress in Columbus wouldn't even enter a movie house with any of them. In the circles in which you're going to move now, any man under forty with an obvious income of his own and who shows the slightest evidence of virility and who has the leisure to have a three-hour lunch with a lady is greeted with piteous gratitude. Believe me, old man, just by being your normal, boyish self, you will be a smashing success. Not the least of the benefits I mean to shower on you is a new conception of your worth. I trust you will ask me to be the best man at your wedding.'

'You're a calculating bastard, aren't you?' I said.

'I calculate,' he said calmly, 'and I intend to teach you to calculate, too. It's absurd that the perfectly good verb, to calculate, should have a bad reputation in the modern world. Let schoolgirls and soldiers wallow in romance, Douglas. You calculate.'

'It all seems so - so immoral,' I said.

'I had hoped you would never use that word,' he said. 'Was it moral to abscond with all that money from the St Augustine Hotel?'

'No.'

'Was it moral for me to hold onto your suitcase when I saw what was in it?'

'I should say not.'

'Morality is indivisible, my boy. You can't select certain chunks of it, as though it were a pie waiting on a table to be cut up and served. Let's face it, Douglas, you and I are no longer permitted the luxury of morality. Let's understand each other, Douglas; it wasn't morality that made you run from Herr Steubel - it was a huge reluctance to share a cell with him.'

'You've got a fucking argument for everything,' I said. 'I'm happy you think that,' he said, smiling. 'Let me present some further arguments. Forgive me if I repeat myself in assuring you that whatever I suggest is in your best interests. I haven't hidden from you that your best interests are my best interests. I am thinking of the quality of life that you and I are eventually going to lead. You agree, I imagine, that, no matter what we do, we will have to do it together -that we will always have to be close together. Just like partners in any enterprise, we will have to be in constant communication. Practically on a day-to-day basis. You do agree, don't you?' 'Yes.'

'For the moment, except for the little disagreement in Lugano, it has been quite pleasant to wander about as we've been doing.'

'Very pleasant.' I hadn't told him about the Alka-Seltzers and the tightness around my waist.

'Eventually, though, it will begin to pall. Going from hotel to hotel, even the best ones in the world, and living out of a suitcase is finally dreary. Traveling is only amusing when you have a home to return to. Even at your age...'

'Please don't make me sound as though I'm ten years old,' I said.

He laughed. 'Don't be so sensitive. Naturally, to me, you seem enviably young.' He became more serious. 'Actually, our differences in age are an asset. I doubt if we would be able to continue for long if we were both fifty or both thirty-three. Rivalries would develop, differences in temperament would arise. This way you can be impatient with me and I can be patient with you. We achieve a useful working balance.'

'I'm not impatient with you,' I said. 'Just scared shitless from time to time.'

He laughed again. 'I take that as a compliment. By the way, has either Lily or Eunice asked you about what you do for a living?'

No.'

'Good girls,' he said. 'Real ladies. Has anybody asked you? I mean, since the happening in the hotel?'

'One lady. In Washington.' Good old Evelyn Coates.

'What did you answer?'

'I said my family had money.'

'Not bad. At least for the time being. If the question arises in Gstaad, I suggest you tell the same story. Later on, we can invent a new one. Perhaps you can say you're a managerial consultant. It covers a multitude of murky activities. It's a favorite cover for CIA agents in Europe. It won't do you any harm in most circles if that's what people believe. You have such an honest face, no one will be inclined to doubt anything you say.'

'How about your face?' I asked. 'After all, people will be seeing us together all the time. Finally we'll be held responsible for each other's faces.'

'My face,' he said reflectively. 'Quite often I study it for hours on end in a mirror. Not out of vanity. I assure you. Out of curiosity. Frankly, I'm not quite sure I know what I look like. Moderately honest, perhaps. What's your opinion?'

'Aging playboy, maybe,' I said cruelly.

He sighed. 'Sometimes, Douglas,' he said, 'frankness is not the virtue it's cracked up to be.'

'You asked me.'

'So I did. I asked you,' he said. 'I'll remember not to ask you again.' He was silent for a moment. 'I've made a conscious effort through the years in a certain direction.'

'What direction?'

'I have tried to make myself look like a semi-retired, English gentleman farmer. Obviously, at least as far as you're concerned, I haven't succeeded.'

I don't know any retired, English gentlemen farmers. We got very few of them at the Hotel St Augustine.'

'Still, you didn't guess that I was an American by birth?'

No.'

'A step m the right direction.' He smoothed his mustache gently. 'Have you ever thought of living in England?'

'No. Actually, I haven't thought of living anyplace. If my eyes hadn't gone wrong, I suppose I'd have been happy staying in Vermont. Why England?'

'Many Americans find it attractive. Especially in the country, perhaps an hour or so away from London. A polite, uninquiring race of people. No hustle or bustle. Hospitable to eccentrics. First-class theater. If you like horses or salmon fishing...'

'I like horses all right. Especially since Rêve de Minuit.' '

'Brave animal. Although I wasn't thinking in exactly those terms. Eunice's father, for example, rides to the hounds three times a week.'

'So?'

'He has a handsome estate which happens to be just one hour from London...'

'I'm beginning to catch on,' I said flatly.

'Eunice is quite independent in her own right.'

'What a surprise.'

'For myself,' he said, 'I find her extraordinarily pretty. And when she isn't under the dominating influence of her sister, a lively and intelligent girl....'

'She's barely looked at me since she arrived,' I said.

'She'll look at you,' he said. 'Never fear.'

I didn't tell him about the lascivious thoughts that had crossed my mind, with Eunice as target, as we drove steadily through the neat countryside. 'So,' I said, 'that's why you asked Lily if she thought Eunice would join us?'

The notion might have flickered through my subconscious,' he said. 'At the time.'

'And now?'

'And now I would advise you to consider it,' he said. There's no great hurry. You can weigh the pros and cons.'

'What would Lily have to say about it?'

'From what she's let drop here and there, I would say that on the whole Lily would react favorably.' He slapped his hands briskly together. We were approaching the outskirts of Bern. 'Let's say no more about it. For the time being. Let us say we'll allow matters to take their natural course.' He reached forward and took the automobile map out of the glove compartment and studied it for a moment, although wherever we went he seemed to know every turn in the road, every street comer. 'Oh, by the way,' he said offhandedly, 'did Priscilla Dean slip you her telephone number that night, too?'