On the other hand, inclination strongly prompted me to stay where I was, to see this thing through, to see more of Felicia Delora! I was thirty years old, free and unencumbered, a moderately impressionable bachelor of moderate means.

Until the time when the shadow of this tragedy had come into my life, which had found its culmination in the little restaurant of the Place d'Anjou, things had moved smoothly enough with me.

I had had the average number of flirtations, many pleasant friendships.

Yet I asked myself now whether there was any one in the past who had ever moved me in the same way as this girl, who was still almost a perfect stranger to me.

I hated the man, her uncle.