“My error,” she laughed, “she--stoops to--stoops to--anyways--We’ll drink to Jelly-bean ... Mr. Jim Powell, King of the Jelly-beans.” And a few minutes later as Jim waited hat in hand for Clark in the darkness of that same corner of the porch where she had come searching for gasolene, she appeared suddenly beside him. “Jelly-bean,” she said, “are you here, Jelly-bean? I think--” and her slight unsteadiness seemed part of an enchanted dream--“I think you deserve one of my sweetest kisses for that, Jelly-bean.” For an instant her arms were around his neck--her lips were pressed to his. “I’m a wild part of the world, Jelly-bean, but you did me a good turn.” Then she was gone, down the porch, over the cricket-loud lawn. Jim saw Merritt come out the front door and say something to her angrily--saw her laugh and, turning away, walk with averted eyes to his car. Marylyn and Joe followed, singing a drowsy song about a Jazz baby. Clark came out and joined Jim on the steps. “All pretty lit, I guess,” he yawned. “Merritt’s in a mean mood. He’s certainly off Nancy.” Over east along the golf course a faint rug of gray spread itself across the feet of the night. The party in the car began to chant a chorus as the engine warmed up. “Good-night everybody,” called Clark. “Good-night, Clark.” “Good-night.” There was a pause, and then a soft, happy voice added, “Good-night, Jelly-bean.” The car drove off to a burst of singing. A rooster on a farm across the way took up a solitary mournful crow, and behind them, a last negro waiter turned out the porch light. Jim and Clark strolled over toward the Ford, their shoes crunching raucously on the gravel drive. “Oh boy!” sighed Clark softly, “how you can set those dice!” It was still too dark for him to see the flush on Jim’s thin cheeks--or to know that it was a flush of unfamiliar shame. IV Over Tilly’s garage a bleak room echoed all day to the rumble and snorting down-stairs and the singing of the negro washers as they turned the hose on the cars outside. It was a cheerless square of a room, punctuated with a bed and a battered table on which lay half a dozen books--Joe Miller’s “Slow Train thru Arkansas,” “Lucille,” in an old edition very much annotated in an old-fashioned hand; “The Eyes of the World,” by Harold Bell Wright, and an ancient prayer-book of the Church of England with the name Alice Powell and the date 1831 written on the fly-leaf.