* * * * * Norman Saylor, professor of ethnology at Hempnell College, was not the sort of man to go snooping around in his wife's dressing room. That was partly the reason why he did it. He was sure nothing could touch the security of the relationship between him and Tansy. The house was very quiet. Spring sunshine and balmy air were sluicing gently through the bedroom windows. It wasn't five minutes since he had put in the final staccato burst of typing on his "Negro Recruit" brochure for the War Office. It looked as if for once they would have a lazy evening to themselves. Totem, the cat, rose from her sun-warmed spot on the neatly piled silk quilt and indulged in a titanic, disruptive-looking yawn, neatly folded her white paws under her black waistcoat, and stared solemnly at Norman. Norman copied her yawn, and felt a partial unkinking of the twelve-work-hours-a-day tension that had traced lines on his chunky face and smudged shadows under his clear, yellow-brown eyes. Such moments as this did not come often these days, but when they did come, they sure felt good. The door of Tansy's dressing room stood invitingly open. It was a tiny room, just a big closet, with no windows. But it was more than a rack of dresses and a creamy dressing table. It was Tansy. On the neat side, but not fussy. A slight pleasant disorder. Very sane--he wondered why that particular word came to his mind, but it hit the spot. A faint perfume conjured up amiable memories. He studied the photographs on either side of the mirror. One of Tansy and himself in modified Indian costume, from three summers back when he had been studying the Yumas. They both looked rather solemn. Another, slightly faded, of an uproarious Negro baptizing in midriver. That was from when he had held the Hazelton Fellowship and been gathering material for his "Social Patterns of the Southern Negro" and his later "Feminine Element in Superstition." Tansy had done more work than two secretaries that busy year when he was hammering out a reputation. There was an ample array of cosmetics--Tansy had been the first of the Hempnell faculty wives to use lipstick and lacquer her nails; there had been covert criticism and talk of "setting the students a bad example," but she had stuck it out. Flanked by cold-cream jars was a photograph of himself, with a little pile of small change, dimes and quarters, in front of it. Idly he slid out a drawer, scanned the pile of stocking rolls, pushed it in, pulled at another, which jammed, so he had to give it a sharp tug. A large cardboard box toward the back caught his eyes. He edged up the cover and took out one of the tiny glass-stoppered bottles. What sort of cosmetic would this be? Too dark for face powder. More like a geologist's soil specimen. An ingredient for a mud pack?