He had done the usual things rich men’s sons did—gone through Yale and into his family’s broking business; slept with pretty girls and taken a few amusing trips; involved himself in a divorce case and come out without marrying the woman. He had been conventional in all the conventional ways of wealth and amorality and been bored to death in the process. His affair with Elizabeth had been one of many; it was no landmark in itself. He only remembered it in detail because right after he escaped, and he used the word in connection with the marriage he felt she expected him to offer, he decided to change his job as well as his bedmate. He took a plane down to Washington to lunch with an old class-mate who was with the State Department, and over the third J. & B. whisky he asked him outright if he could think of anything, he, Peter Mathews, could do before he went berserk and reinvested all his clients’ money in a South American gold mine. He came back to New York with his question unanswered; by the end of the week he had forgotten ever asking it.
