Author’s Note: Somerset Maugham, the eminent novelist, wrote: “Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work… It would not interest me to record the facts, even if I could remember them, of which I have already made a better use. They would seem, moreover, very tame. I have had a varied, and often an interesting life but not an adventurous one. All I can attempt to do now is to give a coherent picture of my feelings and opinions; and here and there, maybe, to state with greater elaboration some idea which the limitations I have thought fit to accept in fiction and in the drama have only allowed me to hint at.” The story below is an intermingling of an experience with a remarkable person whose life was far too dramatic and fascinating that I shouldn’t let pass what Somerset Maugham called the “compass of my interests.” The name of the protagonist of this story has been fictionalized.