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was a noted mathematician. His mother, after a number of years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had become a senior consultant to McKinsey.
    During a carefully planned mutual assignment to London, he to the London School of Economics, she to the London office of the parent company, Dominick attended Westminster School. There, he fell in love with England. And with all things English. He believed his passion was reciprocated—a familiar blindness in Dominick.
    Later, after his parents returned to America, he decided on Trinity College, Cambridge, as opposed to Harvard. There he began to accept what he had only half-understood at Westminster, that his passionate seriousness about his work needed to be leavened by irony. And that, in polite society in England, the sciences were rarely to be mentioned. A minor flirtation with the arts was much more laudable.
    I met him at a little party Elizabeth had given a few years previously. As visits to his flat would provide me with a perfect lookout, I encouraged his interest. My seduction of Dominick, in both strategy and tactics, was so subtly planned and executed that in the moment of possession it was his face which portrayed triumph. The increasing urgency of his deepening love for me was the only complication in an otherwise perfect scenario.
    Before Dominick there had, of course, been men. There was an early boyfriend of Elizabeth’s—a Mexican painter who, to my disappointment (I found this out too late), she had rejected. Then there was a liaison with a wholly unsuitable member of the aristocracy who was playing with the idea of being an artist. That … romance … had allowed me a stolen weekend in Paris. And that side of himself which I guessed he had kept well hidden from Elizabeth was allowed full rein. An interesting and educational two days. The son of a Lexington neighbour proved a much duller conquest. His guilt at his betrayal of Elizabeth was so excessive as to be almost amusing.
    I looked at Dominick. Ruth’s dedicated lover, never Elizabeth’s. The decision to keep her studio surprised me. Elizabeth hadn’t told me—perhaps believing it to be of no consequence. But it was of great consequence for Dominick. I sighed. For the immediate future at least, it rather seemed as if Dominick, and our relationship, would survive.

EIGHT
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    â€œWell, you two … you couple.”
    Hubert smiled. He and Elizabeth, Dominick and I were having a welcome-home dinner at a restaurant close to their home. Elizabeth was not a cook.
    Bronzed, hair bleached, dressed in cream silk shirt and dark brown skirt, Elizabeth talked of Greece. Each word was shot through with love. She spoke of colour with her pretty painter’s eye, and I felt sure that inevitably she had entered her Greek period. Its blue-green lightness and celestial white would be broken only by some cascade of blushing pink petals. Or perhaps, for dramatic contrast, a black-clothed peasant would ride or stride his or her way across the canvas.
    â€œWell, Madame et Monsieur Hubert Baathus, newly wed … happily married … give us a definition of married happiness.” Dominick was always searching for definitions.
    â€œIt does not exist,” Hubert said.
    Elizabeth looked shocked.
    â€œMarriage has no intrinsic happiness. Happiness is to be with the one. And to be the only one for the other.”
    â€œWith or without marriage?”
    â€œYes. Though the ease and convenience and pleasure of formal togetherness is a delightful thing. A wise thing. So marriage is wise happiness. No?”
    â€œYour English is improving dramatically.”
    â€œThank you, Ruth.” He smiled at me.
    â€œHubert’s English is only a little stilted when he first meets people. He is shy.” Elizabeth spoke.
    â€œShy? … Only a little,” I replied.
    â€œWise happiness. I really like that. You both, I hope, will have years and years of wise