Island

"I can see several possible reasons why. She might have loved you because . . ." Susila eyed him appraisingly and smiled. "Well, because you're quite an attractive kind of queer fish."

He laughed. "Thank you for a handsome compliment."

"On the other hand," Susila went on, "(and this isn't quite so complimentary), she might have loved you because you made her feel so damned sorry for you."

"That's the truth, I'm afraid. Molly was a born Sister of Mercy."

"And a Sister of Mercy, unfortunately, isn't the same as a Wife of Love."

"Which I duly discovered," he said.

"After your marriage, I suppose."

Will hesitated for a moment. "Actually," he said, "it was before. Not because, on her side, there had been any urgency of desire, but only because she was so eager to do anything to please me. Only because, on principle, she didn't believe in conventions and was all for freely loving, and more surprisingly" (he remembered the outrageous things she would so casually and placidly give utterance to even in his mother's presence) "all for freely talking about that freedom."

"You knew it beforehand," Susila summed up, "and yet you still married her."

Will nodded his head without speaking.

"Because you were a gentleman, I take it, and a gentleman keeps his word."

"Partly for that rather old-fashioned reason, but also because I was in love with her."

" Were you in love with her?"

"Yes. No, I don't know. But at the time I did know. At least I thought I knew. I was really convinced that I was really in love with her. And I knew, I still know, why I was convinced. I was grateful to her for having exorcised those maggots. And besides the gratitude there was respect. There was admiration. She was so much better and honester than I was. But unfortunately, you're right: a Sister of Mercy isn't the same as a Wife of Love.

But I was ready to take Molly on her own terms, not on mine. I was ready to believe that her terms were better than mine."

"How soon," Susila asked, after a long silence, "did you start having affairs on the side?"

Will smiled his flayed smile. "Three months to the day after our wedding. The first time was with one of the secretaries at the office. Goodness, what a bore! After that there was a young painter, a curlyheaded little Jewish girl whom Molly had helped with money while she was studying at the Slade. I used to go to her studio twice a week, from five to seven. It was almost three years before Molly found out about it."

"And, I gather, she was upset?"

"Much more than I'd ever thought she'd be."

"So what did you do about it?"

Will shook his head. "This is where it begins to get complicated," he said. "I had no intention of giving up my cocktail hours with Rachel; but I hated myself for making Molly so unhappy. At the same time I hated her for being unhappy. I resented her suffering and the love that had made her suffer; I felt that they were unfair, a kind of blackmail to force me to give up my i

"I hope at least they were enjoyable," said Susila.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Only moderately. Rachel could never forget that she was an intellectual. She had a way of asking what one thought of Piero di Cosimo at the most inopportune moments. The real enjoyment and of course the real agony-I never experienced them until Babs appeared on the scene."

"When was that?"

"Just over a year ago. In Africa."

"Africa?"

"I'd been sent there by Joe Aldehyde."

"That man who owns newspapers?"

""And, all the rest. He was married to Molly's aunt Eileen. An exemplary family man, I may add. That's why he's so serenely convinced of his own righteousness, even when he's engaged in the most nefarious financial operations."

"And you're working for him?"

Will nodded. "That was his wedding present to Molly-a job for me on the Aldehyde papers at almost twice the salary I'd been getting from my previous employers. Princely! But then he was very fond of Molly."

"How did he react to Babs?"

"He never knew about her-never knew that there was any reason for Molly's accident."

"So he goes on employing you for your dead wife's sake?"

Will shrugged his shoulders. "The excuse," he said, "is that I have my mother to support."

"And of course you wouldn't enjoy being poor."

"I certainly wouldn't."

There was a silence.

"Well," said Susila at last, "let's get back to Africa."

"I'd been sent there to do a series on Negro Nationalism. Not to mention a little private hanky-panky in the business line lor Uncle Joe. It was on the plane, flying home from Nairobi. I found myself sitting next to her."

"Next to the young woman you couldn't have liked less?"

"Couldn't have liked less," he repeated, "or disapproved of more. But if you're an addict you've got to have your dope-the dope that you know in advance is going to destroy you."

"It's a fu

"Not even sex addicts?"

"The sex addicts are also person addicts. In other words, they're lovers."

"But even lovers sometimes hate the people they love."

"Naturally. Because I always have the same name and the same nose and eyes, it doesn't follow that I'm always the same woman. Recognizing that fact and reacting to it sensibly-that's part of the Art of Loving."

As succinctly as he could, Will told her the rest of the story. It was the same story, now that Babs had come on the scene, as it had been before-the same but much more so. Babs had been Rachel raised, so to speak, to a higher power-Rachel squared, Rachel to the rath. And the unhappiness that, because of Babs, he had inflicted upon Molly was proportionately greater than anything she had had to suffer on account of Rachel. Proportionately greater, too, had been his own exasperation, his own resentful sense of being blackmailed by her love and suffering, his own remorse and pity, his own determination, in spite of the remorse and the pity, to go on getting what he wanted, what he hated himself for wanting, what he resolutely refused to do without. And meanwhile Babs had become more demanding, was claiming ever more and more of his time-time not only in the strawberry-pink alcove, but also outside, in restaurants, and nightclubs, at her horrible friends' cocktail parties, on weekends in the country. "Just you and me, darling," she would say, "all alone together." All alone together in an isolation that gave him the opportunity to plumb the almost unfathomable depths of her mindlessness and vulgarity. But through all his boredom and distaste, all his moral and intellectual repugnance, the craving persisted. After one of those dreadful weekends, he was as hopelessly a Babs addict as he had been before. And on her side, on her own Sister-of-Mercy level, Molly had remained, in spite of everything, no less hopelessly a Will Farnaby addict. Hopelessly so far as he was concerned-for his one wish was that she should love him less and allow him to go to hell in peace. But, so far as Molly herself was concerned, the addiction was always and irre-pressibly hopeful. She never ceased to expect the transfiguring miracle that would change him into the kind, unselfish, loving Will Farnaby whom (in the teeth of all the evidence, all the repeated disappointments) she stubbornly insisted on regarding as his true self. It was only in the course of that last fatal interview, only when (stifling his pity and giving free rein to his resentment of her blackmailing unhappiness) he had a