_"It--well, we'll try it. I just hope Ha keeps working. It would be just like that whimsical imp to get us half materialized and then leave us."_ _"Or what if something should happen to him, his spirit killed in some way?"_ _"We won't even inner-think that."_ * * * * * Ted drove down the curving, back rocky road to _Sweeney's_. It was a low-roofed building of cedar shakes, with an open air dining room on piles above the water of the cove. Ted stayed in the bar. He had French-fried shrimp and garlic bread and beer. And after that, some whiskey. And after that, some dialogue with Sweeney regarding the respective merits of Shahn and Albright. Ted knew very little about either of them, but Sweeney knew less so it was a satisfying discussion. He drove home in a mood. He was remembering the Honolulu days with Ann, and the days and nights before that. What they'd had, they'd find again. There was a solution to it all, and not on Venus. He came home to find a note on the kitchen table: _Henri's in town and he insisted I visit the Blairs with him. He's just done over their place. Don't wait up._ Henri was elegantly thin and fairly tall. An interior decorator with a modern bent. He'd done the Truesdale place three times. If it were anyone but Ann, I'd be jealous, Ted thought. As it was, he felt only a grating annoyance. He poured a king-sized jolt of bourbon, added a trace of water and went into the study. He didn't turn on the light. He sat in the dark and sipped the bourbon--and fell asleep.... The blonde had her hair up and was wearing a red jacket above a white flannel skirt. Her smile was the same as last night's, and possibly a shade warmer. "How did you know I'd come?" he asked. "I didn't, but a girl can hope. Bad day?" "Oh--unsatisfactory. And yours?" "Barren. Your wife's out to get Hamilton, isn't she?" "I guess." "Does she--suspect about us?" "No." A pause, and, "Why did your husband leave you?" "He didn't. I left him. Engineer, lived by the slide rule. Are you going to leave your wife?" He didn't answer that. He pulled her close and buried his face in the bright hair. The violet mists and the smell of grass and the envious sigh of the willows. Why couldn't all life be like this?... When he woke, again, dawn was coming through the study window. He rose wearily and stood near the glass door that led to the rear yard. On the wet grass, the morning quietness lay like a blanket. In the house below, he saw the shadowed, stretching figure of a woman behind a drawn shade. She, too, was awake. Coincidence? And the rest an illusion? He'd always been more or less conventional; it was difficult to accept the super-conventional without reserve or rationalization. * * * * *