There were rules of the game, and so he had played it with her. You left wives and virgins alone: well, she was long divorced, and had slept around a bit since then. You neither gave to nor took from a woman. You made it perfectly clear you weren't interested in anything permanent. And when you broke it off, after a pleasant few months, you did it cleanly: he had the best excuse in the world, back in 1955, an academic grant that returned him to Italy for a year of research in his specialty, the Renaissance. (But she had been very quiet, the last few weeks; sometimes at night he had heard her trying not to cry.) Back home again, you didn't resume old affairs: you were simply friendly, on such occasions as you happened to meet.
Yes, of course. Only then she took up with Bruce, and Bruce had wanted to marry her, and she had plainly been considering it, and now Bruce was dead and Kintyre was on his way to console her. Could you walk in her door and say: "Hello, I still subscribe to the why-buy-a-cow philosophy so be careful, now you may weep on my shoulder"?
He realized he was sucking on a dead cigarette. He threw it away and stopped to light another. He was almost under the building which housed his own department.
"Good evening."
Kintyre looked up. Jabez Owens was walking toward him.
"Hello," he answered. "How are you? Excuse me, but I've got to—"
Owens reached him and took his hand. "My dear old chap," he said in his most Harvard accent, "I'm awfully sorry."
"Hm?"
"Young Lombardi. I saw it in the papers. You know?"
"Yes." Kintyre looked coldly at Owens. The writer was a tall man, the breadth of his shoulders attributable only in part to his tailor. He had straight ruddy features, dark wavy hair graying at the temples, blue eyes behind wrought-iron glasses, tweedy clothes with a scarf filling the V of the jacket, and a small calabash pipe in one pocket.