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contacts with old friends.
    Once-familiar telephone numbers slipped my mind, and I had to use the directory. I tried ringing the Bentleys first, a very pleasant young American couple. Sam was the representative of an oil company, and his wife, Judy, had been quite a friend of mine. It was a real disappointment to have my call answered by a deep guttural voice which informed me stiffly that they had departed from Vienna; Herr Bentley, so the stranger believed, had received promotion abroad. I’d been away only two months, yet the seemingly permanent order of things had already changed!
    I got no answer from the next two numbers, and I could guess why. There had always been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in our set for early-evening drinks. If I could only hit on the right address, I’d probably find quite a gathering of the old crowd.
    The best plan was to try somebody more likely to be at home. I thought of the Hutyens, the cheerfully plump Klara, who always served such vast, delicious, indigestible meals. After only three rings her voice came crackling over the line.
    “Klara!” I cried happily. “This is Jessica Varley.”
    There was just the briefest pause, and then she was all excited delight, greeting me in a gush of muddled English. “Jessica, liebling! How delightful! It is pleasured I am to be hearing your voice. So you are here in Vienna already!”
    I felt a sudden sense of chill. “But, Klara, how did you know I was coming?”
    “I do not know, liebling, how is it possible that I know? But I am happy you are arrived. Am I not telling Bruno all the time how I am hoping so much that you will be coming.”
    I sighed with relief, remembering how often in the past I had got the wrong idea from Klara’s words. She loved to practice her English on me, though we should probably have managed better in my German.
    “I’m here for a holiday, Klara. Just a few weeks.”
    We chatted for a long time, Klara bouncing out a string of questions. Was I better now? Really better? She meant, of course, had I recovered my mental balance from the hammerblow of Max’s death. And what were my plans now? Please to remember, she insisted, that I was welcome to stay with them as long as I liked. Dear Klara, I thought. She had a kind and generous heart.
    She was most pressing that I should dine with them this very evening. “You must come, liebling. We eat Leberknodlsuppe— youwill like that, no? And roasted pig....”
    “I’d love to, Klara, but will you ask me for some other time? I’ve already got a dinner date for tonight.”
    “It is a man, yes? That is good! Please, then, you must the two of you with us eat.”
    I could no doubt have persuaded Steve to go to the Hutyens’. But I didn’t really want that. And besides, I rationalized, I needed to break myself in gently to the mammoth meals of a Viennese home.
    “It’s terribly sweet of you, Klara, “But I’m afraid I can’t. Not tonight.”
    “It matters nothing,” she said, and added seriously, “I am so happy for you, Jessica, that already you are forgetting. . . .” And then she became tied up in trying to extricate herself from the faux pas. But it was impossible to be really offended by anything Klara said.
    I realized with dismay, though, that what Klara had blundered into saying, others could well think in private—and a lot less charitably. It just hadn’t struck me that our friends might get the idea I’d forgotten Max too soon, too easily.
    Having fixed to dine with Klara in two days’ time, on Sunday, I rang off and decided not to bother with making any more calls at the moment. I strolled into the almost empty lounge and sat down; then after a few minutes I casually ordered a cup of mokka. I was discovering that playing a false part is not an easy thing to do, and I had to guard against acting too impetuously.
    I sat there pretending to read a glossy magazine until Steve called for me. He came walking across the quiet lounge and took the chair