* * * * * Half an hour later, Kenneth J. Malone, alone in his room, was humming happily to himself as he brushed a few specks of dust from the top of his best royal blue bowler. He faced the mirror on the wall, puffed on the cigar clenched between his teeth, and adjusted the bowler to just the right angle. There was a knock on the door. He went and opened it, carefully disposing of the cigar first. "Oh," he said. "What are you doing here?" "Just saying hello," Thomas Boyd grinned. "Back at work?" Boyd didn't know, of course, what had happened. Nor need he ever know. "Just about," Malone said. "Spending the evening relaxing, though." "Hm-m-m," Boyd said. "Let me guess. Her name begins with L?" "It does not," Malone said flatly. "But--" Boyd began. Malone cast about in his mind for an explanation. Telling Boyd the truth--that Luba and Kenneth J. Malone just weren't equals as far as social intercourse went--would leave him exactly nowhere. But, somehow, it had to be said. "Tom," he said, "suppose you met a beautiful girl--charming, wonderful, brilliant." "Great," Boyd said. "I like it already." "Suppose she looked about ... oh ... twenty-three," Malone went on. "Do any more supposing," Boyd said, "and I'll be pawing the ground." "And then," Malone said, very carefully, "suppose you found out, after you'd been out with her ... well, when you took her out, say, you met your grandmother." "My grandmother," Boyd said virtuously, "doesn't go to joints like that." "Use your imagination," Malone snapped. "And suppose your grandmother recognized the girl as an old schoolmate of hers." Boyd swallowed hard. "As a what?" "An old schoolmate," Malone said. "Suppose this girl were so charming and everything just because she'd had ... oh, ninety years or so to practice in." "Malone," Boyd said in a depressed tone, "you can spoil more ideas--" "Well," Malone said, "would you go out with her again?" "You kidding?" Boyd said. "Of course not." "But she's the same girl," Malone said. "You've just found out something new about her, that's all." Boyd nodded. "So," he said, "you found out something new about Luba. Like, maybe, she's ninety years old?" "No," Malone said. "Nothing like that. Just--something." He remembered Queen Elizabeth's theory of politeness toward superiors: people, she'd said, act as if they believed their bosses were superior to them, but they didn't believe it. On the other hand, he thought, when a man knows and believes that someone actually _is_ superior--then, he doesn't mind at all. He can depend on that superiority to help him. And love, ordinary man-and-woman love, just can't exist. Nor, Malone told himself, would anyone want it to. It would, after all, be damned uncomfortable. "So who's the girl?" Boyd said. "And where? The clubs are all closed, and the streets probably aren't very safe just now."