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said. She fished up her token and turned to leave.
    "Wait a m.inute," he whispered. He looked around and took hold of her wrist with fingers that were surprisingly strong. "I got somC' thing to show you,"
    "To show me?"
    "Look," he said. He slid a photograph, picture side down, through the change door. She looked at him curiously and picked it up.
    At first she didn't realize what it was, it seemed like two people in a strained and unaccustomed posture, wrestlers perhaps. Then she saw it was a man and a woman, and when she discovered what they were doing to each other she felt her face redden and her hand began to shake so hard she could scarcely push the picture back through the slot. She turned to flee.
    "Hey," he called after her, and then more loudly, indignantly: "Hey!"
    She looked back for one instant.
    "What's the matter?" he called. "I thought we was friends. Ha-ha, ha-ha." He laughed raucously, angrily, insulted and wanting to hurt her. "Where ya going?"
    She pushed her way through the turnstile, and for the first time in her life jumped aboard a subway train the instant its doors started to close. A fat man took her arm to help her as the rubber-tipped jaws snapped shut.
    "What's your hurry?" he said. "You'll get yourself killed someday. Crazy New York girls!"
    New York girls, she thought, and her fright began to slip away from her. He thought she was a New York girl; did that mean she looked as if she belonged? Perhaps that terrible man in the change booth had thought she was a native New Yorker too, and hadn't realized that back home you spoke to everybody and it didn't mean a thing. She pushed her way to a seat, edging her way between two men who were dashing for it. She received a sharp elbow in the ribs, achieved the seat triumphantly, and when she saw her two competitors collide into each other she could barely keep back her

    smile. She was groping, but she was going to get along. Today in the oflBce she was going to speak to that smart-looking girl in the raccoon collar, maybe they could even have lunch together someday.
    At her desk, she was busy typing addresses on stickers for rejected manuscripts and looking around for Caroline when Miss Farrow came out of her oflSce and headed for her. April was secretly fascinated by Miss Farrow; she wondered whether she had ever been married and what kind of men she saw outside the office.
    "You'll have to go in and help Mr. Shalimar today," Miss Farrow said without even a good-morning. "His secretary is out sick. It's that large oflBce over there with the closed door. You can give the rest of those stickers to the manuscript clerk to finish."
    "Yes, ma'am," April said, trying to conceal her delight with a mask of office dignity. She swept all the stickers together and nearly ran down the hall to the room where manuscripts were registered and handed out to readers. Mr. Shalimar was the editor-in-chief of Derby Books! She had only glimpsed him through his half-opened door, a tall, older man with a grayish face and strongly hewn features, and she had never thought she would be lucky enough to meet him. Mary Agnes had told her that Mr. Shalimar had kno%\Ti Eugene O'Neill.
    "I can't help you with any more of tliese today," she told the manuscript girl excitedly. "I'm working for Mr. Shalimar."
    The manuscript clerk stood there impassively in her book-lined room and snapped her chewing gum. "We all have our troubles," she said finally.
    April looked at her, surprised, and then shrugged and hinried down the hall to the office with the closed door. She tapped on it timidly. There was no answer. She stood for a moment wnth her ear against the door, trying to hear if there was a conference going on inside, but she heard nothing, so she turned the knob and went in.
    It was a huge, plush office, with a soft, tliick carpet on tlie floor, a black leather sofa, and rows of bookcases lined with paperback books. In front of the wall of windows was a great wooden desk. The bHnds were