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if he had slept in it. With him was someone

so striking that Elspeth uttered an involuntary murmur of surprise. She was a small girl with a petite figure,

fashionably dressed in a short red jacket and a loose black skirt, with curls of dark hair escaping from under a little red hat with a peak. 'Meet Billie Josephson,' said Anthony.

Bern Rothsten said to her: 'Are you Jewish?'

She was startled to be asked so direcdy. Yes.'

'So you can marry Anthony, but you can't join his country club.'

Anthony protested: 'I don't belong to a country club.'

'You will, Anthony, you will,' said Bern.

Luke stood up to shake hands, nudged the table

with his thighs, and knocked over a glass. It was unusual for him to be clumsy, and Elspeth realized with a twinge of annoyance that he was instantly taken with Miss Josephson. 'I'm surprised,' he said, giving her his most charming smile. 'When Anthony said his date was called Billie, I imagined someone six feet tall and built like a wrestler.'

Billie laughed merrily and slid into the booth beside Luke. 'My name is Bilhah,' she said. 'It's biblical, she was the handmaiden of Rachel and the mother of Dan. But I was brought up in Dallas, where they called me Billie-Jo.'

Anthony sat next to Elspeth and said quietly: 'Isn't she pretty?'

Billie was not exactly pretty, Elspeth thought She had a narrow face, with a sharp nose and large, intense, dark brown eyes. It was the whole package that was so stunning: the red lipstick, the angle of the hat, the Texas accent, and most of all her animation. While she talked to Luke, telling him some story about Texans now, she smiled, frowned, and pantomimed all kinds of emotion. 'She's cute,' Elspeth said to Anthony. 'I don't know why I never noticed her before.'

'She works all the time, doesn't go to many parties.'

'So how did you meet her?'

'I noticed her in the Fogg Museum. She was wearing a green coat with brass buttons and a beret. I thought she looked like a toy soldier fresh out of the box.' -

Billie was not any kind of toy, Elspeth thought. She was more dangerous than that. Billie laughed at something Luke had said and swiped his arm in mock admonishment. The gesture was flirtatious, Elspeth thought. Irritated, she interrupted them and said to Billie: 'Are you planning to beat the curfew tonight?'

Radcliffe girls were supposed to be in their dormitories by ten o'clock. They could get permission to stay out later, but they had to put their name in a book, with details of where they planned to go and

what time they would be back; and their return time

was checked. However, they were clever women, and :jl- the complex rules only inspired them to ingenious

deceptions. Billie said: 'I'm supposed to be spending "at the night with a visiting aunt who has taken a suite at V the Ritz. What's your story?' 'No story, just a ground-floor window that will be open all night.'

Billie lowered her voice. 'In fact, I'm staying with friends of Anthony's in Fenway.'

% Anthony looked sheepish. 'Some people my mother "f knows, who have a large apartment,' he said to Elspeth.

'Don't give me that old-fashioned look, they're terribly respectable.'

'I should hope so,' Elspeth said primly, and she had the satisfaction of seeing Billie blush. Turning to Luke, she said: 'Honey, what time is the movie?'

He looked at his wristwatch. 'We've got to go,' he said.

Luke had borrowed a car for the weekend. It was a two-seater Ford Model A roadster, ten years old, its sit-up-and-beg shape looking antiquated beside the streamlined cars of the early forties. ,_ Luke handled the old car skilfully, obviously enjoying himself. They drove into Boston. Elspeth asked herself if she had been bitchy to Billie. Maybe", a little, she decided, but she was not going to shed any tears.

They went to see Alfred Hitchcock's latest film, Suspicion, at Loew's State Theatre. In the darkness, Luke -put his arm around Elspeth, and she laid her head on his shoulder. She felt it was a pity they had chosen a film about a disastrous marriage.

Around midnight they returned to Cambridge and pulled off Memorial Drive to park facing the Charles River, next to the boathouse. The car had no heater, and Elspeth turned up the fur collar of her coat and leaned against Luke for warmth.

They talked about the movie. Elspeth thought that in real life the Joan Fontaine character, a repressed girl brought up by stuffy parents, would never