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times out here, don’t we, darling?”
    “What? Oh, yes, of course, dear.” Her voice was quite deep, and almost completely unaccented. All words had the same value.
    The waiter came and took their order and when he had gone Fletcher glanced toward Jane and was a bit surprised at the intent way she was scrutinizing him.
    “We think it’s quite pleasant,” Ellis said, frowning a bit vaguely in his wife’s general direction.
    Laura said, “We’re going to come out here at dawn and run barefoot, hand in hand, across the landscape.”
    Ellis laughed mechanically. “Darling,” he said. “Fletch and Jane aren’t used to your … sense of humor. They’ll think you don’t like the club.”
    Laura leaned forward, looking quite breathless. “Ah, but I do! I adore it! I’m savoring every moment. Every single perfect moment. I can also sit up and balance a piece of meat on my nose. Until you tell me it’s all right to eat it, of course.”
    Ellis looked faintly ill. Jane had bright red spots in her cheeks. Fletcher said quickly and smoothly, “Just because we let you sit at the table like people doesn’t mean we can’t take you out and lock you back in the car.” Ellis and Jane laughed gratefully.
    Laura looked soulfully at Fletcher and said, softly, “Woof!”
    “That,” said Jane tartly, “is called barking up the wrong tree, dear.”



Chapter Three
    Laura Corban read the quick light tone in Jane’s voice, sensed, beneath the pseudosophistication of the remark, a most definite “hands off” warning. Quite a handsome woman, Laura thought. A certain animal wit, but just vacant enough to be undemanding. A tawny, playful, good-tempered lioness, she decided. Certain of her mate, but not so certain that it wasn’t wise to post a few warning signs. A practical executive’s wife, loaded with this shoulder-to-shoulder business, and quite evidently circumspect, faithful, and sure of her values. It would indeed be a delight to be so positive about everything.
    The terrace was dim in the fading day, and Ellis was talking about getting the children off to visit his parents at the Cape all summer. It made Laura think of the strange quiet day she had had, alone in the big old frame house they had rented, on the narrow, elm-shaded street where old women rocked and fanned on the shallow porches.
    Ellis had gone to work that Friday morning after a slightly sticky connubial kiss, scented with shaving lotion, and the vast shady quiet day had stretched ahead of her, full of a wonderful silence after the departure of Ellis, junior, and Jean Marie. At times she thought of her children with guilt. It seemed unnatural to be so relieved that they were gone. When they were around she often had difficulty in believing that they had come from her body. Ellis, quite apparently, had possessed the dominant genes. Even at five, Ellis junior was a very sober little citizen, quite humorless—his face a diminutive caricature of his father’s. With Jean Marie it was, perhaps, too early to tell. She was three, very round, very messy, very noisy. When the children were around and most usually during the eveningwhen Ellis sat working or reading, she often had the feeling that she was there in that small group as someone hired, a stranger, a person displaced.
    She had thought with pleasure of her quiet day, and she had gone around and pulled down all the dark green roller shades and locked all the doors. The house retained the pleasant coolness of the night
    During the first hour after Ellis left for work, she raced through a bare minimum of housework, working fast and with an oddly expectant feeling. When everything was done, she got out her records; the ones she never played when Ellis or the children were around. The children always made noise, and Ellis always seemed to find it necessary to listen with intense concentration and make self-conscious statements when the music was done.
    She sat on the floor and picked the records she