Cass was strangely jumpy but managed to pull himself together before stepping from the elevator on the ground floor. He turned down another aisle to avoid entrapment in the perfume department. The store, thought Cass, by golly was much warmer or was it so dreadfully hot on the street. He hurried toward the hosiery department but stopped-another impulse at the mens' underwear counter and bought a half-dozen cotton undershirts and briefs. He sprung ten cents for a shopping bag from a chrome-piped dispensing machine-wondering if he was on Candid Camera—and dropped his growing pile of packages into it. He stopped at the hosiery counter, set up on a high stool and spun the wheel of a small carousel holding samples of his very favorite brand of stockings. He selected the shade best suited to his new velvet dress.

"May I help you?"

"Please ..

three pairs this shade

dove gray. Ten long, demi-toe

if they come that way--not mesh!"

"I'll see..."

She turned away and ran her finger down a stack of crimson boxes, her long lacquered nail ratchetting to a halt half-way.

"Here we are."

"And the same shade in a panty-hose-ten, medium-tall."

Cass waited while the sales-girl disappeared into a labyrinth of shelves that looked like a library with all volumes horizontal. He felt another warm flush and perspiration began to flow down his body, his clothes adhering to his clammy skin. He could barely wait to get home and, good grief, there was an hour's drive ahead before he could bathe and... get . . . comfortable . . .

"Here we are. How many in the panty-hose?"

"Just two . . .”

Cass signed the sales-slip and dropped the package on top of the others in his shopping bag just as a store detective-so readable with his out-of-place business suit and flat-footed walk-passed by, eyeing him from head to toe and up again. Cass thanked the salesgirl as he

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