alk of weather, pigs, roads, and spring plowing
which rose from the others. Vincent looked at him with approval. He felt
strongly drawn to this splendid, primitive creature, and knew perfectly
well why. He liked anybody who had pep enough to have an original
feeling, not one prescribed by the ritual and tabu of his particular
tribe.

"Hello, Frank," he said. "Have a cigarette?

"We'll have to go out if we smoke," said Frank.

"Well, why shouldn't we?" suggested Vincent, looking around him.
"There's nothing to do here, yet."

Frank tore himself loose from the supporting wall with a jerk, and
nodded. Together they stepped out of the front door, unused by the
guests, who all entered by the kitchen. At first it was as though they
had plunged into black velvet curtains, so great was the contrast with
the yellow radiance of the room they had left. They looked back through
the unshaded windows and saw the room as though it were an illustration
in a book, or a scene in a moving-picture play, the men grouped in a
dark mass on one side, the women, smiling, bending their heads towards
each other, the lamps glowing on the green branches and on the shining
eyes of all those pleasure-expectant human beings.

As they looked, Nelly Powers came in from another room, doubtless the
"far room" of which her mother-in-law had spoken. She was carrying a
large tray full of cups. She braced herself against the weight of the
earthenware and balancing herself with a free swinging motion on her
high-heeled shoes walked with an accentuation of her usual vigorous
poise.

"By George, she's a beauty!" cried Vincent, not sorry to have an
opportunity to talk of her with his companion.

Frank made no comment. Vincent laughed to himself at the enormous
capacity for silence of these savages, routing to the imagination of a
civilized being. He went on, determined to get some expression from the
other, "She's one of the very handsomest women I ever saw anywhere."

Frank stirred in the darkness as though he were about to speak. Vincent
cocked his ear and prepared to listen with all the prodigious sharpness
of which he knew himself capable. If he could only once make this yokel
speak her name, he'd know . . . all he wanted to know.

Frank said, "Yes, she's good-looking, all right."

Vincent kept silence, pondering every tone and overtone of the remark.
He was astonished to find that he had no more direct light than ever on
what he wanted to know. H