Fan’s character and the quality of her life changed completely; she
gave up going out and sank into the deep secretive isolation of a woman
who lives for one man alone. Her other men friends melted away. Many
of her women friends dropped her. Not those of her own little band,
but Micky didn’t like these. Claire who was fond of her, said--“_Elle
se rend ridicule avec ce garçon_,” and refused to have them to dinner
together. Fan didn’t seem to care; she stayed more and more at home.
This created for her serious money difficulties. She had never had any
meals at all to speak of in her own flat, and her butcher’s bill had
come to nothing, but now her boy had to be fed. He would come into
dinner or lunch nearly every day, rosy and ravenous, and consume large
beef steaks, fat cutlets, chickens, eggs, butter, sweets. Her bills
became larger as her revenues dwindled. She could or would no longer
avail herself of her old sources of wealth. Her vogue was vanishing,
and with it the amiability of dressmakers and restaurant-keepers. She
had a distaste now for gambling on the Bourse and asking Beaudoin for
tips. Micky it seemed disapproved of women gambling. Her love affair
was costing her her livelihood; and Micky himself gave her nothing,
perhaps because he had nothing much to give; perhaps because of some
idea of honour, perhaps because he didn’t know how hard up she was.
Fan was not the kind to let on. I know for a fact that she often went
hungry to give him a good square meal, and I suspected that under her
last year’s dresses, she didn’t have on enough to keep her warm.
It became increasingly evident as the winter wore on that there were
influences at work, perhaps a special influence that was worrying them
both, but I had no suspicion of the truth. Had I known I would have
done something effective--I would have wasted no time with Bianca.
Fan had burned her bridges. There was no going back for her now, no
slipping down into the old stupefying pleasures. He had changed her,
he had purified and weakened her. There was for her a future with him
or nothing. If she lost him, she would be done for. She knew this. She
remained clear-headed and played her cards with desperate caution.
And I watching her, saw just how frightened she was, but she told me
nothing.
I did not know that Bianca knew Micky. She went out very little
now. People spoke of her living shut up in her house as they might
have spoken of some lurid figure of legend, some beautiful ogress,
gnashing her hungry teeth in a cave, but I didn’t listen when they
talked of her. I wanted less than ever to hear about her. She still
saw Philibert, I knew, but this no longer concerned me. And she seemed
to have given up pursuing me. I ought to have known she was up to
something. I am sorry now that I refused to think about her, for I
might have reasoned it out and discovered by a process of logic, what
she was up to--I might have known that she would inevitably choose
Micky for her own, just because he was in love with another woman,
just because he was the pet of Paris, just because finally, Fan’s life
depended on him and because I cared for Fan as if she were my own child.