Marina's affair with Demon Veen started on his, her, and Daniel
	Veen's birthday, January 5, 1868, when she was twenty-four
	and both Veens thirty.
	As an actress, she had none of the breath-taking quality that
10.05	makes the skill of mimicry seem, at least while the show lasts,
	worth even more than the price of such footlights as insomnia,
	fancy, arrogant art; yet on that particular night, with soft snow
	falling beyond the plush and the paint, la Durmanska (who paid
	the great Scott, her impresario, seven thousand gold dollars a
10.10	week for publicity alone, plus a bonny bonus for every engage-
	ment) had been from the start of the trashy ephemeron (an
	American play based by some pretentious hack on a famous
	Russian romance) so dreamy, so lovely, so stirring, that Demon
	(not quite a gentleman in amorous matters) made a bet with his
10.15	orchestra-seat neighbor, Prince N., bribed a series of green-room
	attendants, and then, in a cabinet reculé (as a French writer of
	an earlier century might have mysteriously called that little
	room in which the broken trumpet and poodle hoops of a for-
	gotten clown, besides many dusty pots of colored grease, hap-
10.20	pened to be stored) proceeded to possess her between two

[ 10 ]

	scenes, Chapter Three and Four of the martyred novel). In
	the first of these she had undressed in graceful silhouette behind
	a semitransparent screen, reappeared in a flimsy and fetching
	nightgown, and spent the rest of the wretched scene discussing
11.05	a local squire, Baron d'O., with an old nurse in Eskimo boots.
	Upon the infinitely wise countrywoman's suggestion, she goose-
	penned, from the edge of her bed, on a side table with cabriole
	legs, a love letter and took five minutes to reread it in a languor-
	ous but loud voice for nobody's benefit in particular since the
11.10	nurse sat dozing on a kind of sea chest, and the spectators were
	mainly concerned with the artificial moonlight's blaze upon the
	lovelorn young lady's bare arms and heaving breasts.
	Even before the old Eskimo had shuffled off with the mes-
	sage, Demon Veen had left his pink velvet chair and proceeded
11.15	to win the wager, the success of his enterprise being assured by
	the fact that Marina, a kissing virgin, had been in love with him
	since their last dance on New Year's Eve. Moreover, the tropical
	moonlight she had just bathed in, the penetrative sense of her
	own beauty, the ardent pulses of the imagined maiden, and the
11.20	gallant applause of an almost full house made her especially
	vulnerable to the tickle of Demon's moustache. She had ample
	time, too, to change for the next scene, which started with a
	longish intermezzo staged by a ballet company whose services
	Scotty had engaged, bringing the Russians all the way in two
11.25	sleeping cars from Belokonsk, Western Estoty. In a splendid
	orchard several merry young gardeners wearing for some reason
	the garb of Georgian tribesmen were popping raspberries into
	their mouths, while several equally implausible servant girls in
	sharovars (somebody had goofed—the word "samovars" may
11.30	have got garbled in the agent's aerocable) were busy plucking
	marshmallows and peanuts from the branches of fruit trees. At
	an invisible sign of Dionysian origin, they all plunged into the
	violent dance called kurva or "ribbon boule" in the hilarious
	program whose howlers almost caused Veen (tingling, and

[ 11 ]

	light-loined, and with Prince N.'s rose-red banknote in his
	pocket) to fall from his seat.
	His heart missed a beat and never regretted the lovely loss,
	as she ran, flushed and flustered, in a pink dress into the orchard,
12.05	earning a claque third of the sitting ovation that greeted the
	instant dispersal of the imbecile but colorful transfigurants from
	Lyaska—or Iveria. Her meeting with Baron O., who strolled
	out of a side alley, all spurs and green tails, somehow eluded
	Demon's consciousness, so struck was he by the wonder of that
12.10	brief abyss of absolute reality between two bogus fulgurations
	of fabricated life. Without waiting for the end of the scene, he
	hurried out of the theater into the crisp crystal night, the snow-
	flakes star-spangling his top hat as he returned to his house in
	the next block to arrange a magnificent supper. By the time he
12.15	went to fetch his new mistress in his jingling sleigh, the last-act
	ballet of Caucasian generals and metamorphosed Cinderellas had
	come to a sudden close, and Baron d'O., now in black tails and
	white gloves, was kneeling in the middle of an empty stage,
	holding the glass slipper that his fickle lady had left him when
12.20	eluding his belated advances. The claqueurs were getting tired
	and looking at their watches when Marina in a black cloak
	slipped into Demon's arms and swan-sleigh.
	They reveled, and traveled, and they quarreled, and flew back
	to each other again. By the following winter he began to suspect
12.25	she was being unfaithful to him, but could not determine his
	rival. In mid-March, at a business meal with an art expert, an
	easy-going, lanky, likeable fellow in an old-fashioned dress-coat,
	Demon screwed in his monocle, unclicked out of its special flat
	case a small pen-and-wash and said he thought (did not doubt,
12.30	in fact, but wished his certitude to be admired) that it was an
	unknown product of Parmigianino's tender art. It showed a
	naked girl with a peach-like apple cupped in her half-raised hand
	sitting sideways on a convolvulus-garlanded support, and had

[ 12 ]

	for its discoverer the additional appeal of recalling Marina
	when, rung out of a hotel bathroom by the phone, and perched
	on the arm of a chair, she muffled the receiver while asking her
	lover something that he could not make out because the bath's
13.05	voice drowned her whisper. Baron d'Onsky had only to cast
	one glance at that raised shoulder and at certain vermiculated
	effects of delicate vegetation to confirm Demon's guess. D'On-
	sky had the reputation of not showing one sign of esthetic emo-
	tion in the presence of the loveliest masterpiece; this time, none-
13.10	theless, he laid his magnifier aside as he would a mask, and
	allowed his undisguised gaze to caress the velvety apple and
	the nude's dimpled and mossed parts with a smile of bemused
	pleasure. Would Mr. Veen consider selling it to him there and
	then, Mr. Veen, please? Mr. Veen would not. Skonky (a one-
13.15	way nickname) must content himself with the proud thought
	that, as of today, he and the lucky owner were the sole people
	to have ever admired it en connaissance de cause. Back it went
	into its special integument; but after finishing his fourth cup of
	cognac, d'O. pleaded for one last peep. Both men were a little
13.20	drunk, and Demon secretly wondered if the rather banal re-
	semblance of that Edenic girl to a young actress, whom his
	visitor had no doubt seen on the stage in "Eugene and Lara" or
	"Lenore Raven" (both painfully panned by a "disgustingly in-
	corruptible" young critic), should be, or would be, commented
13.25	upon. It was not: such nymphs were really very much alike
	because of their elemental limpidity since the similarities of
	young bodies of water are but murmurs of natural innocence
	and double-talk mirrors, that's my hat, his is older, but we have
	the same London hatter.
13.30	Next day Demon was having tea at his favorite hotel with
	A Bohemian lady whom he had never seen before and was never
	to see again (she desired his recommendation for a job in the
	Glass Fish-and-Flower department in a Boston museum) when

[ 13 ]

	she interrupted her voluble self to indicate Marina and Aqua,
	blankly slinking across the hall in modish sullenness and bluish
	furs with Dan Veen and a dackel behind, and said:
	"Curious how that appalling actress resembles 'Eve on the
14.05	Clepsydrophone' in Parmigianino's famous picture."
	"It is anything but famous," said Demon quietly, "and you
	can't have seen it. I don't envy you," he added; "the naïve
	stranger who realizes that he or she has stepped into the mud of
	an alien life must experience a pretty sickening feeling. Did you
14.10	get that small-talk information directly from a fellow named
	d'Onsky or through a friend of a friend of his?"
	"Friend of his," replied the hapless Bohemian lady.
	Upon being questioned in Demon's dungeon, Marina, laugh-
	ing trillingly, wove a picturesque tissue of lies; then broke down,
14.15	and confessed. She swore that all was over; that the Baron, a
	physical wreck and a spiritual Samurai, had gone to Japan for-
	ever. From a more reliable source Demon learned that the
	Samurai's real destination was smart little Vatican, a Roman
	spa, whence he was to return to Aardvark, Massa, in a week or
14.20	so. Since prudent Veen preferred killing his man in Europe
	(decrepit but indestructible Gamaliel was said to be doing his
	best to forbid duels in the Western Hemisphere—a canard or
	an idealistic President's instant-coffee caprice, for nothing was
	to come of it after all), Demon rented the fastest petroloplane
14.25	available, overtook the Baron (looking very fit) in Nice, saw
	him enter Gunter's Bookshop, went in after him, and in the
	presence of the imperturbable and rather bored English shop-
	keeper, back-slapped the astonished Baron across the face with
	a lavender glove. The challenge was accepted; two native
14.30	seconds were chosen; the Baron plumped for swords; and after
	a certain amount of good blood (Polish and Irish—a kind of
	American "Gory Mary" in barroom parlance) had bespattered
	two hairy torsoes, the white-washed terrace, the flight of steps
	leading backward to the walled garden in an amusing Douglas

[ 14 ]

	d'Artagnan arrangement, the apron of a quite accidental milk-
	maid, and the shirtsleeves of both seconds, charming Monsieur
	de Pastrouil and Colonel St. Alin, a scoundrel, the latter gentle-
	men separated the panting combatants, and Skonky died, not
15.05	"of his wounds" (as it was viciously rumored) but of a gangren-
	ous afterthought on the part of the least of them, possibly self-
	inflicted, a sting in the groin, which caused circulatory trouble,
	notwithstanding quite a few surgical interventions during two
	or three years of protracted stays at the Aardvark Hospital in
15.10	Boston—a city where, incidentally, he married in 1869 our
	friend the Bohemian lady, now keeper of Glass Biota at the
	local museum.
	Marina arrived in Nice a few days after the duel, and tracked
	Demon down in his villa Armina, and in the ecstasy of recon-
15.15	ciliation neither remembered to dupe procreation, whereupon
	started the extremely interesnoe polozhenie ("interesting condi-
	tion") without which, in fact, these anguished notes could not
	have been strung.
	(Van, I trust your taste and your talent but are we quite sure
15.20	we should keep reverting so zestfully to that wicked world
	which after all may have existed only oneirologically, Van?
	marginal jotting in Ada's 1965 hand; crossed out lightly in her
	latest wavering one.)
	That reckless stage was not the last but the shortest—a matter
15.25	of four or five days. He pardoned her. He adored her. He
	wished to marry her very much—on the condition she dropped
	her theatrical "career" at once. He denounced the mediocrity
	of her gift and the vulgarilty of her entourage, and she yelled
	he was a brute and a fiend. By April 10 it was Aqua who was
15.30	nursing him, while Marina had flown back to her rehearsals of
	"Lucile," yet another execrable drama heading for yet another
	flop at the Ladore playhouse.
	"Adieu. Perhaps it is better thus," wrote Demon to Marina
	in mid-April, 1869 (the letter may be either a copy in his

[ 15 ]

[ 16 ]