Stephen Reynolds put his suitcase on the floor and switched on the hall light of his apartment, closing the door behind him. As he took off his hat, he saw his reflection in the rook mirror hanging above the little mahogany chest of drawers. He paused, hat still in hand, and looked closely into the mirror. He looked closely at his forty-five-year-old face.

His face looked younger than it was. His complexion was clear, and there were but few lines. True, his hair was graying-though people told him that it was "distinguished." It wasn't a middle-aged face, he thought, and his figure wasn't too bad.

He was tall and very-well, "slender" was how he liked to think of it; he knew that he was definitely thin. Muscles he had never had in spite of years of rowing. But at least he didn't have a pot. For a man over six feet, a thirty-four inch waist was pretty good.

Stephen continued to stare at his image. Finally he shook his head and smiled wryly. "You incompetent, naive, and consummate jackass!" he muttered.

Having thus relieved his feelings to a small degree, he hung up his hat and topcoat in the hall closet and went to see what was left in the refrigerator. In a week's absence he'd forgotten whether there was anything in the apartment that would do for supper. There was. Cheese, beer, and eggs: Welsh rarebit.

As he stirred grated Cheddar into warm Budweiser, he thought again of just how it had happened.

It had happened because one leg of his business trip had taken him through Washington. A sense of family duty had impelled him to call his Richmond cousin, Miss Mary Laughton, a lady whom he'd not seen for a decade although they often corresponded.

"My dear Stephen," she said in her plangent voice, "how lovely to hear from you! Where are you?"

"I'm in Washington, but I can get a flight to Richmond that'll put me there at about four o'clock. I thought that if it's convenient for you, I'd like to pay you a short visit. I have to be home by tomorrow night."

"Why, that will be delightful! We'll meet you at the airport. What is your flight number?"

As Stephen left the telephone booth, he wondered who "we" could be. His cousin lived alone, so far as he knew, and her only brother, Bob Laughton, and his wife were in Italy for the year. Miss Laughton wasn't old enough to need a companion, and she wasn't rich enough to have a chauffeur. Well, he'd soon know.

The flight was on time.

When Stephen walked into the waiting room, he wondered if his cousin would remember him well enough to recognize him. He stood uncertainly looking about at the moving crowds of passengers, the friends and relatives meeting and greeting, the poisonously charming young women in their smart airlines uniforms.

"Is this Stephen?"

He turned and saw his cousin, a tall, slender woman with fashionably dressed gray hair and a well-cut suit of dark-blue wool. Altogether very neatly turned out, he thought, quite the ancienne Junior Leaguer.

"Cousin Mary!" He bent slightly to kiss her. "You haven't changed a bit in ten years!"

"It's sweet of you to say so, Stephen, and really, except for my silly heart trouble, I don't feel any older. Rather worrisome at times, too. I'm so afraid I'll make a fool of myself one of these days." She smiled at him. "But you haven't changed very much, either. A little grayer, of course, but you

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