The uncertainty continued after they returned to New York. “He leaves books, letters, a lock of hair, an Augustus John reproduction that looks like me—phone calls … He doesn’t know what he wants.” Shirley joined him in Connecticut on the first day of summer, they had lunch with his old high school teacher Catherine Wood, and slowly she began to reflect on the appeal of “the ambiguity of F,” having wondered earlier “if the depth, the wish for meaning is only in myself and wished on him in my mind.” She wrote often to Muriel, airing her frustration. “Sometimes he is v sweet and all goes well. Then he goes home and wonders whether he has committed himself to anything, and next time Acts Remote, though he is not much good at that. All very well but I’m getting tired of waiting round for the fcking Judgement of Paris; the Judgement of Shirlers is going to assert itself one of these days…” In mid-July he called at her apartment and they went walking “in the deserted UN garden and saw the espaliered pears … Perfect moment,” a scene she would recall each spring, over and over, through her life, looking back on this as the time “when we began to believe in marrying.” Through these months, Francis was selling some of the artworks he and Beatrice had bought: the Renoir oil, two Picasso etchings, and the Degas pastel (this last for $80,000; his dealer wrote, “it’s a wrench but think of all that pretty money invested in General Motors”). Muriel was convinced that Shirley would soon be “a married lady … and feel sure it will come to pass in the way that’s right for you both. You must hire a housekeeper the very first thing and have plenty of room in the house.” She also advised a more assertive demeanour: “Why don’t you swear at your lover? You’re too ladylike with him by half.” There was to be one last misstep—a wounded outburst from Shirley in early August, after which Francis sent a card, breaking things off once more.