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In 1974, in the last year of his New York life, when Barbra -- who was twenty-nine, worked in the Wall Street office as his secretary and smoked Dunhills which she kept in a cigarette holder, triple facts that made her desirable to Haffner as he passed middle age -- asked him why it was he still we…

Was it too late for him to change? To undergo one final metamorphosis? I am not what I am! That was Haffner's constant wish, his mantra. He was a man replete with mantras. He would not act his age, or his Age. He would not be what others made of him.

And yet; and yet.

MG: Oh yes. One thing is, men don’t know how women talk when they’re together, just as we really don’t know how men talk among themselves. You have to rather intuit it from something the man will let drop. And you’ll think, ‘Oh, so they do gossip.’

JL: People often ask me a question I find ridic…

MG: La vie en France. I would not have been happy if I had not tried. I had to try and I had to do it before I was thirty. I didn’t want to marry again. I travelled alone most of the time. I liked it. When you’re young you meet people very easily. You stand on a street corner and you have to beat t…

MG: I never tried to. But there’s a book of her love letters to Charles Ritchie, and I did know him very well. He was Canadian. I knew his whole family. I was married from his aunt’s house in Ottawa. Bowen was married to the head of the BBC and it was an unconsummated marriage. I don’t know what ha…