galow type, with paneled redwood walls either stained to a dismal
brown or quite frankly left to their rather characterless pink. This
home was different. Even the pungent oak logs crackling in the fireplace
did so with indefinable distinction. The general tone of the
surroundings was as little in keeping with the patchwork personality of
its mistress as one could imagine. It was as if the singular
completeness of Mrs. Flint's home left no time nor energy for a finished
individuality. Claire got all this in the briefest of flashes, just a
swift, inclusive glance about the entrance hall and through the doorways
leading into the rooms beyond. Particularly did she sense the severe
opulence of the dining-room, twinkling at a remoter distance than the
living-room--its perfectly polished silver, its spotless linen, its
wonderfully blue china, not to mention the disconcerting fact that the
table in the center was laid for but two.

And then Flint himself came forward with a very red face and an absurdly
cordial greeting.

"Well, I began to wonder whether you'd risk it. This will be a storm and
no mistake.... Here, let me have your coat. Come, you're quite wet....
Shall you warm up on a hot toddy or something cooler--a cocktail?"

She felt his hand sliding down her arm as she released the coat to his
too-eager fingers. "Oh no, Mr. Flint! Thank you, nothing. It's only a
bit of rain on the surface. I'm quite dry."

"Quite dry!" He echoed her words with a guffaw. "Well, then, we'll have
to moisten you up. I always say everything's a good excuse for a drink.
If you're cold you take a drink to warm up; if you're warm you take one
to cool off. You dry out on one, and you wet up on one. I don't know of
any habit with so many good reasons back of it. I'm dry, too.... We'll
have a Bronx! That's a nice, ladylike drink."

Claire weighed her reply. She did not want to strike the wrong note; she
wanted to let him have a feeling that she was accepting everything in a
normal, matter-of-fact way, as if she saw nothing extraordinary in the
situation.

"You're very kind, but really you know ... if I'm to get my dictation
straight...."

"Well, perhaps there won't be any dictation. We're not slaves, you and
I. Maybe it will be much pleasanter to sit before the fire and listen to
the storm. What do you say to that?"

She turned from him deliberately, under the fiction of fluffing up her
hair before a gilt mirror near the door. She was thin