Stop it! She HAD to stop that thinking. Don't think! Neurotic, psychotic. neurotic, psychotic. Just nerves, that doctor said, with that oh-come-now-we-bothknow-what-you-need smile. Can just lonliness cause such a thing? A spell like that had never before come on except in her room. Was she getting worse? At least she had stopped the rest of it, the crying and all.

Oh a pretty sight, a pretty mess, teacher seen walking and crying alone on lamplit streets, oh a pretty sight, oh a pretty mess!

She stopped in front of the house. No car parked in front! So HE hadn't arrived.

Ha! The first time she had beaten him.

Oh what would he be like tonight?

Amusing. how the car usually foretold the type. Cadillacs (Maud Ellen had pushed Money and Gracious Living in the beginning) were old, bejowled, heavy with power and paunchy like moneybags. Pontiacs, Buicks and the like were a trifle younger but of the same mold. Watching Their Step on the way to The Top. their conversation velvetly cobwebbed for clues on social connections and ability. Fords, Chevies and the like yielded unimaginative young farmers, clerks, sales-

men.

One night an old pick-up truck had been a shy electrician with golden hair over deep brown eyes and deeper-brown skin, and she had ached to paint him and had even ached at having to refuse his courting.

And then, she chuckled, there was the time she had been almost raped by the Jaguar.

She rang the doorbell, sighing resignedly. and Maud Ellen flung open the door and gushed verbosely upon her.

"Billie HONey, come IN out of that FREEZing weather! BRRRrrr! Mercy! Oh but it HAS brought out your color. I MUST say this northern climate DOES have its points. My grandmother-here honey, let me have your wraps-that maid WOULD pick today to be sick-my grandmother-on my MOTHER'S side, of course-Granny always said a lady before making an entrance pinches her cheeks and bites her lips for color and keeps it there with HIGH spirits and brilliant and FLUent conversation. Ah but I forget, you're our shy intellectual poetess. our cultural Muse, yes indeed, our shy cultural Muse. But deep waters. you know they say, ah yes, deep waters!"

"How are you honey?"

This last was usually Maud Ellen's first perceptible punctuation, not for lack of breath but a parting and parrying shot to hold the adversary's conversation to the minimum, usually given over the shoulder.

"Fine" Billie murmured, though Maud Ellen had already disappeared into the kitchen.

Billie paused idly, reluctant. in the hallway. Really, she should stop these ridiculous onceor twice-a-month matchmaking evenings. True, Maud Ellen was. practically speaking, the schoolboard, but now the resignation would nullify that. However, the food was good, there was little else to do in town, and George was nice and she had been amazed to discover-quite interesting. She entered the livingroom.

"Hello George, how are you and Dame Sitwell getting along?"

George slowly put down his book, took his pipe from his mouth, and smiled at her.

"Hello Billie. I think that she-ah, well-I really don't know yet what I think

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