speeding again when he was clear of the village. A few minutes
later, he was turning into the crushed-limestone drive that led up to the
buff-brick Gresham house.

A girl met him at the door, a cute little redhead in a red-striped dress,
who gave him a smile that seemed to start on the bridge of her nose and
lift her whole face up after it. She held out her hand to him.

"Colonel Rand!" she exclaimed. "I'll bet you don't remember me."

"Sure I do. You're Dot," Rand said. "At least, I think you are; the last
time I saw you, you were in pigtails. And you were only about so high."
He measured with his hand. "The last time I was here, you were away at
school. You must be old enough to vote, by now."

"I will, this fall," she replied. "Come on in; you're the first one
here. Daddy hasn't gotten back from town yet. He called and said he'd
be delayed till about nine." In the hall she took his hat and coat and
guided him toward the parlor on the right.

"Oh, Mother!" she called. "Here's Colonel Rand!"

Rand remembered Irene Gresham, too; an over-age dizzy blonde who was
still living in the Flaming Youth era of the twenties. She was an
extremely good egg; he liked her very much. After all, insisting upon
remaining an F. Scott Fitzgerald character was a harmless and amusing
foible, and it was no more than right that somebody should try to keep
the bright banner of Jazz Age innocence flying in a grim and sullen
world. He accepted a cigarette, shared the flame of his lighter with
mother and daughter, and submitted to being gushed over.

"... and, honestly, Jeff, you get handsomer every year," Irene Gresham
rattled on. "Dot, doesn't he look just like Clark Gable in _Gone with the
Wind_? But then, of course, Jeff really _is_ a Southerner, so ..."

The doorbell interrupted this slight _non sequitur_. She broke off,
rising.

"Sit still, Jeff; I'm just going to see who it is. You know, we're down
to only one servant now, and it seems as if it's always her night off, or
something. I don't know, honestly, what I'm going to do...."

She hurried out of the room. Voices sounded in the hall; a man's and a
girl's.

"That's Pierre and Karen," Dot said. "Let's all go up in the gunroom, and
wait for the others there."

They went out to meet the newcomers. The man was a few inches shorter
than Rand, with gray eyes that looked startlingly light against the dark
brown of his face. He wasn't using a cane, but he walked with a slight
lim