"He beat it across the mountains into France," Len explained. "Since then he's steered clear of causes. He goes to sea once in a while to make a few bucks, drinks a lot, reads a lot, asks some of the shrewdest questions I know. If he's anything you can put a label on, I'd say he was a touch of Rousseau, a touch of Tolstoi, plenty of Voltaire. Come to think of it, a touch of Norbert Wiener too. Wiener, you may remember, used to ask some damned iconoclastic questions for a cyberneticist. Steve knows Wiener's books by heart." Steve sounded like a very colorful fellow, I suggested. "Yep," Len said. "Marilyn used to think so." I don't think I moved a muscle when he said it; the smile didn't leave my face. "Ollie," Len went on, "I've been meaning to speak to you about Marilyn. Now that the subject's come up--" "I've forgotten all about it," I assured him. "I still want to set you straight," he insisted. "It must have looked funny, me moving down to New York after commencement and Marilyn giving up her job in the lab and following two days later. But never mind _how_ it looked. I never made a pass at her all that time in Boston, Ollie. That's the truth. But she was a screwy, scatter-brained dame and she decided she was stuck on me because I dabbled in poetry and hung around with artists and such in the Village, and she thought it was all so glamorous. I didn't have anything to do with her chasing down to New York, no kidding. You two were sort of engaged, weren't you?" "It really doesn't matter," I said. "You don't have to explain." I finished my drink. "You say she knew Lundy?" "Sure, she knew Lundy. She also knew Kram, Rossard, Broyold, Boster, De Kroot and Hayre. She knew a whole lot of guys before she was through." "She always was sociable." "You don't get my meaning," Len said. "I am not talking about Marilyn's gregarious impulses. Listen. First she threw herself at me, but I got tired of her. Then she threw herself at Steve and _he_ got tired of her. Damn near the whole male population of the Village got tired of her in the next couple years." "Those were troubled times. The war and all." "They were troubled times," Len agreed, "and she was the source of a fair amount of the trouble. You were well rid of her, Ollie, take my word for it. God save us from the intense Boston female who goes bohemian--the icicle parading as the torch." "Just as a matter of academic curiosity," I said as we were leaving, "what became of her?" "I don't know for sure. During her Village phase she decided her creative urge was hampered by compasses and T-squares, and in between men she tried to do a bit of painting--very abstract, very imitative-original, very hammy. I heard later that she finally gave up the self-expression kick, moved up to the East Seventies somewhere. If I remember, she got a job doing circuit designing on some project for I.B.M."