THEY had left the city during the same week eight years before: Michael to get married and James to visit Paris—for as long as his money held out. Both decisions had been sudden. In early October they had been looking for an apartment together; before Christmas they had shared a last drink at The Lion's Head, and James, wearing an old tweed suit and a new black turtleneck, had posed by the bar, patting his various pockets and bulges.Le compartiment du passeport, he had chanted, a bemused grin angled raggedly on his long face, le compartiment du billet, le compartiment de la monnaie, and then, the pat elaborated gingerly and the voice deepened, le grand compartiment du peckère. He had done a sharp jig, shaken hands, bobbed out of the bar in a walk quick and bandy as Chaplin's, had flagged a taxi without looking back.

The abrupt decisions had a little intimidated them both, had conferred upon both projects a muffling sense of adventure. They had kept in touch, perfunctorily perhaps at first, both of them perhaps a little lonely and surprised in their sudden new lives.

And then one day in the early spring a letter had come from James. Quite earnestly and out of character, he wrote of that sense of adventure, spoke of passing through the short period between decision and embarkation in a state of almost numbed wonder. He was in Spain by then, living alone in the country, sorting some things out, he said. The letter went on to describe the stark beauty of the Spanish countryside and the curious satisfaction he found in the simple ordered life he was leading there.