It started in a restaurant, and after the waiters and the police had separated us he said, “I’ll see you at the hotel,” where we were both staying. He had the room above me, and at four in the morning I rolled home and knocked at his door. “Come in,” he said briskly, ‘and take off your shoes so we won’t make a noise.” Quietly we stripped to the waist, then faced each other. We hit and ducked for what seemed an interminable length of time. Several times he hit me square on the chin, but to no effect. “I thought you could punch,” I sneered. He made a lunge, missed and smashed his head against the wall, almost knocking himself out. I tried to finish him off, but my punches were weak . . . Suddenly, I received a blow full in the mouth which shook my front teeth, and that sobered me up. “Enough,” I said. “I don’t want to lose my teeth.” He came over and embraced me, then looked in the mirror: I had cut his face to ribbons. My hands were swollen like boxing gloves, and blood was on the ceiling, on the curtains and the walls. How it got there, I do not know. (My Autobiography, pp. 113-4)