Helen's eyes travelled an inch or two over the page she was reading.. "Hmmm?" she asked, raising her eyebrows, as her head rose slowly from the book, When her eyes met his he nodded curtly at the plate.

"That," he said.

Oh," she said, shrugging her shoulders slightly. "Why, just some caviar hors d'oeuvres. I saw it at the supermarket this afternoon and I thought it. might be fun to have some for a change."

"Caviar is it? Quite a change," he said, in a tone of righteous indignation. "Now, really, Frank. I only bought a small jar of it. It's all right there in front of you."

Frank reached out for one of the black-coated crackers and bit into it. He crunched thoughtfully for a moment mocking the attitude of an epicure passing judgment. He swallowed and rinsed his throat with sherry. "Doesn't go very well with this wine," he said as if to pronounce his considered judgment.

"I doubt that you would have wanted me to buy a bottle of champagne to go with it. Then you would have had to dress for dinner and you know how you hate to do that." The sarcasm in her voice was obvious.

"Nonsense. But you're beginning to make this sound like something of a celebration."

She was beginning to feel somewhat exasperated. "I swear to you, Frank," she said turning her head and eyes upward and to the right as she put her left hand out partly in the manner of taking an oath and partly as if to block an unpleasant thought, "as God is my witness, I will never, never buy another jar of caviar." With each accented syllable, she pushed her hand against the air for emphasis. Then, dropping her hand to the table she nodded her head vigorously as if to give a note of finality to the whole proceeding and said, "There, I hope you're mollified now."

Really, Helen, you don't have to make such a production out of it. I only...." He stopped short and began to redden, not from embarrassment (although that did seem to be part of it) but from anger. "Making a production" of something had been one of their son's common phrases and now the very thought of that son was prohibited in this quiet house.

Helen had not noticed this "slip" until she saw him redden. She, too, remembered the phrase and, wishing to smooth over the unpleasantness for her husband, closed her book and said, "I'll get the salad." She rose from her chair and disappeared into the kitchen.

She walked to the counter on which she had placed the lettuce and the salad bowls. The rays of the sinking sun lit up the room with an intense orange hue. As she busied herself preparing the salad she heard the sound of whistling. She peered out the window to see the boy next door silhouetted against the sun. She sighed, not so much because he reminded her of her own son but because he was for her a kind of symbol. She looked at him. On this warm summer afternoon he was simply dressed in a pair of khakis and tennis shoes; he wore no shirt. She looked at his bare chest and arms and thought of the change that had come over him. On Saturday she had seen a different boy whose lithe and sun-tanned body had begun to harden but who still retained here and there the soft tenderness of his late adolescence. On Saturday he had still been the type of the innocent youth and as such symbolized for her her son when he had been that age and older.

Saturday night she had heard the neighbor's car drive up later than usual. On Sunday, in the blinding light and heat of the afternoon she had looked out this same window to see a changed boy. There was a swagger in his step that had not been there before; now he was conscious of his maleness. Her symbol had gone; John had never swaggered that suddenly.

As she picked up the wooden salad bowls and started back to the dining room, she heard Frank shout her name. She frowned, regretting that her quiet reverie should have been thus disturbed and also because she hated to have Frank shout, and backed through the swinging door. She turned to face him. "Whatever is it, Frank," she said as she put one bowl of salad in front of him

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