But he woke again when the moonlight came on his face and he started to think about Roger and the women he had been in trouble with. He and Roger had both behaved stupidly and badly with women. He did not want to think of his own stupidities so he would think of Roger’s.
I won’t pity him, he thought, so it is not disloyal. I have been in enough trouble myself so that it is not disloyal to think about Roger’s trouble. My own is different because I only really loved one woman and then lost her. I know well enough why. But I am through with thinking about that and it would probably be well not to think about Roger either. But tonight, because of the moonlight which, as always, would not let him sleep, he thought about him and his serious and comic troubles.
He thought about the last girl Roger had been in love with in Paris when they had both lived there and how very handsome and how very false he thought she was when Roger had brought her to the studio. For Roger there was nothing false about her. She was another of his illusions and all his great talent for being faithful was at her service until they were both free to marry. Then, in a month, everything that had always been clear about her to everyone who knew her well was suddenly clear to Roger. It must have been a difficult day when it first happened but the process of seeing her clearly had been going on for some time when Roger had come up to the studio. He had looked at the canvases for a while and spoken critically and very intelligently about them. Then he said, “I told that Ayers I wouldn’t marry her.”
“Good,” Thomas Hudson had said. “Was it a surprise?”
“Not too much. There’d been some talk about it. She’s a phony.”
“No,” Thomas Hudson had said. “How?”
“Right through. Any way you slice her.”
“I thought you liked her.”
“No. I tried to like her. But I couldn’t make it except at the start. I was in love with her.”
“What’s in love?”
“You ought to know.”
“Yes,” Thomas Hudson had said. “I ought to know.”
“Didn’t you like her?”
“No. I couldn’t stand her.”
“She was your girl. And you didn’t ask me.”
“I told her. But now I have to make it stick.”
“You better pull out.”
“No,” he said. “Let her pull out.”
“I only thought it might be simpler.”
“This is my town as much as it is hers.”
“I know,” Thomas Hudson had said.
“You fought that one out, too, didn’t you?” Roger had asked.
“Yes. You can’t win on any of them. But you can fight them out. Why don’t you just move your quartier?”
“I’m all right where I am,” Roger had said.
“I remember the formula. Je me trouve très bien ici et je vous prie de me laisser tranquille.”
“It starts with je refuse de recevoir ma femme,” Roger had said. “And you say it to a huissier. But this isn’t a divorce. It’s just breaking up.”
“But isn’t it going to be hard on you seeing her?”
“No. It’s going to cure me. That and hearing her talk.”
“What about her?”
“She can figure that out for herself. She’s figured plenty out in the last four years.”
“Five,” Thomas Hudson had said.
“I don’t think she was doing so much figuring the first year.”
“You’d better clear out,” Thomas Hudson had said. “If you don’t think she was figuring the first year you’d better go a long way away.”
“She writes very powerful letters. Going away would be worse. No. I’m going to stay here and go on the town. I’m going to cure it for keeps.”
After he and this girl split up in Paris, Roger was on the town; really on the town. He joked about it and made fun of himself; but he was very angry inside for having made such a profound fool of himself and he took his talent for being faithful to people, which was the best one he had, next to the ones for painting and writing and his various good human and animal traits, and beat and belabored that talent miserably. He was no good to anyone when he was on the town, especially to himself, and he knew it and hated it and he took pleasure in pulling down the pillars of the temple. It was a very good and strongly built temple and when it is constructed inside yourself it is not so easy to pull down. But he did as good a job as he could.