When the party broke up, I contrived to hang around for a little while. She came back to me tucking a piece of paper into her bosom with a laughing deprecation anent “these lovesick boys who insist upon writing what they fear to say!” But I had my doubts about the contents of that note, although my doubts arose from no actual reasons except suspicion. I made a list of all the people who were there that night to show to the Captain. I had decided to keep my eyes open whenever any one of them was present again. Next day the Captain would be back on duty by special invitation. Madame Gedouin was taking a party down in the country for bathing. Which got a laugh out of one little lady. We couldn’t use the old familiar excuse this time—but it’d take more than a team of horses and a couple of tanks to get this chicken into any bathing suit! What a farce that would be!... I hoped the Captain didn’t begin entertaining any funny ideas—but this was one case where it couldn’t be helped. As Ben would say, “Here’s one poor fish that don’t like the water.” —5— If the Captain hadn’t been so insistent, I would have found some excuse for staying away from that bathing party, but he refused to listen to any excuses and kept repeating his demand that I do everything possible to pick up the information that was so desired. So I went. I dropped into the Madame’s and had lunch with her before the other members of the party arrived. While she was getting ready to depart I wandered around the apartment, ostensibly surveying the many trick decorations and objets d’art, but actually studying every wall and floor for possible evidences of something secret or suspicious. But there was nothing of the kind and I finally accepted her invitation to come into her boudoir, where her maid was helping her put the finishing touches to her toilette.... I began to suspect that the Madame was trying to torment or tempt me, and there was a bare possibility that my reluctance to make any real kind of love to her had aroused her interest. Sometimes it must be true that lack of evidence of desire engenders desire: I mean if a woman thinks a man doesn’t want her, very often she will go out of her way to make him want her.... At least, so I gathered from personal experiences that I had heard.