She then plunged into a detailed résumé of her grievances, which were many. She spoke with a cold vindictiveness that was repellent, and yet with a certain relish. I was to discover soon that Mrs. Breese, instead of shrinking from the publicity of the scandal, gloried in it. Who can forget the first day of her trial when the decrepit State Court Building was mobbed by the curious? For that event she had seated herself beside her chauffeur in the baby-blue limousine. She wore a bright plaid skirt, a Russian blouse, and about her head she had bound a bright bandanna handkerchief. “It is the gypsy in me,” she confided later. But if you were to dismiss her as a silly woman, you must ignore the occasional gleam of intelligence that shone from the fog of her chatter. And the occasionally generous impulses that made you think of her as a fine and noble-minded woman who had somehow let her life literally fall to pieces. Mrs. Breese on the witness stand was meat and drink for the newspapers. She thought in headlines, and just about the time you had decided she was exhausted as a subject, she dragged out something else to feed the flames. Poor Mr. Breese hid from the reporters and smashed photographers’ cameras, and although he had been guilty of only a meaningless affair with a Follies beauty of uncertain reputation, lost the case with a resounding thud. And got himself thrown out of clubs, and snubbed by righteous individuals who knew the value of discretion. Guy Thomas took the stand and absolved Mrs. Breese and himself from all wrong-doing. He was thirty-two then, dark, with that sleek look of a man who gives a good deal of attention to his clothes and his barber. He was singularly handsome, and had once been a model for commercial photographers. That was when he could not find work as an actor. Which was frequently. He was not a good actor. He had met Mrs. Breese at one of those Bohemian parties where social distinctions are wiped out for the evening, and she had taken what I believed at the time to have been a casual interest in him. He did dance very well. He had a classic regularity of feature, and an excellent chin, and was one of the weakest men I ever met. I cannot explain his actions otherwise. As a type you associate him with Fifth Avenue tailors and Park Avenue restaurants, cheap cigarettes in gold cases, and an extremely limited knowledge of anything transpiring beyond his own immediate world. Readily enough he admitted that occasionally Mrs. Breese had been good enough to entertain him in certain restaurants in return for his services as cavalier and dancing partner. “I didn’t have the money to take her to such places,” he explained with a frank smile and a gleam of white teeth. “We discussed that, and rather than lose the pleasure of taking her out, I agreed she could pay the bills.” There was a titter and some giggles in the courtroom, at which the young man flushed.