He hestitated for a last look at the cozy living-room which had been his real home for five care-free years. He looked long at the doorway of the small front bedroom which had been Greg's, and often his own. The door was closed now, as it had been since Greg was killed, and the room was empty and unused. He squared his shoulders and took a long breath, and with a resolute effort put these memories behind him.

"Come on, folks," he said, "we'll be late!"

An hour later, alone in the speeding bus, he sat silent and unseeing, as if suspended, for a brief interval, between two worlds.

ce clinked in the highball glasses, and the atmosphere of Hal's apartment was opaque with smoke. John sat in a darkened corner of the sofa, by himself, sipping a drink moodily, and trying to ignore the insistent clamour of the party. However, this was almost impossible. In the far corner of the room, a cherub-faced youth was singing the words of some current love-ballad in a thin, fruity tenor, while a lean, hollowchested fellow strummed out a piano accompaniment. Oblivious to this, clusters of guests, some fifteen altogether, alternately murmured and shouted in feverish talk.

"Where's Josephine??" one suddenly screeched. "She promised she would be here tonight!" "Why girl, didn't you know . . .?" another retorted. "Her boy friend left her for some woman.. I saw her last week, and she was completely broken up, talking about the bitter end, and everything..."

"Yes, but yesterday she told me she'd be here tonight. She wants to forget it all... but all. Ted was brutal to her, really... said he could love her but not her goldfish! You know how she pampered them!" There were peals of shrill merriment at this, followed by a knock at the dooran odd, intermittent rap like a Morse code.

"Speak of the devil...!" one of them quipped. "It's Joe. I'd know her knock if I heard it in China." Hal opened the door, and Josephine posed dramatically in the opening-a thick-set man, swarthy and hirsute, whose weak, moon-shaped face and lisping speech belied his other characteristics. He wore an enormous onyx ring on one forefinger, and on his face the air of one who was accustomed to lionizing every party.

John retreated further into the corner of the sofa, trying intently to think how he got here in the first place. There were the long, tense weeks after he had first come to N, weeks occupied chiefly with breaking himself in to a new and intricate job. Then had come the gradual relaxation, the growing awareness of the unfamiliar surroundings. Then he had begun to notice men's eyes upon him as he passed along the streets. Then he had found himself, almost unconsciously, meeting their eyes, and making swift, silent calculations. He had deliberately avoided seeing the few whom he and Greg had previously met. Yet he had found himself making desultory visits to a few gathering-places he had heard of, reluctantly choking down a few drinks, while he searched the eyes and faces of his companions. He was still looking for Greg... this much he realized. But he had dimly sensed to begin with that such a search would end in nothing but disappointment, and he finally gave it up. Then at last, in desperation, he had remembered Hal, an elderly man. who, one evening in the summer of the previous year, had taken him and Greg in tow, and given

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