Tonight would be one more night for her to reduce the overload of work. Besides, Dilman was having his last conferences with Kwame Amboko before and after his first State Dinner, and Flannery and the wire-service men and syndicated columnists (like George) would be standing by in the press lobby. She might be required to help Flannery and his girls if there were any press releases, which she did not mind as much, since indirectly she would be helping George.

But more than the haste of their dinner, what disturbed her right now, as they strolled hand and hand toward the square and the White House across from it, was George’s mood. Whatever his shortcomings-no one is perfect, her father always used to say, although it does not hurt to try-George Murdock was almost consistently cheerful and lighthearted. Rarely was he pensive. When he complained, and usually he did it in a joking way, it was not about the $150 a week he earned from Tri-State Syndicate, but about the fact that the twelve newspapers in his string were small, obscure, and so no one in Washington ever saw his stuff. As a consequence, he had no permanent slot in the Press Room off the West Wing entrance, and no standing among his colleagues or with the administration. This indignity, added to the chore of having to be his own photographer, sometimes became a matter of annoyance to him. Yet most of the time he enjoyed his work, what standing it did give him, and he lived economically in his bachelor’s quarters, his only extravagances being his numismatic collection, Indian-head coins his specialty, and his gifts to Edna.

From the time they had begun going together, she had wanted to help him succeed, because instinctively she knew that she might be helping to liberate herself from spinsterhood and improve her own condition of life. While she could have been of enormous value to him numerous times, by slipping out to him scoops or beats or whatever the reporters called exclusive stories, she had refrained from doing so. By her rigid standards it would have been unethical and unthinkable. George had always been a darling about this, and had never pressed her. Sometimes she had ached to let him in on a secret a few hours or days before it would become public, so that he could benefit by it and become famous. She had never done so. The main consideration was not that such an act might cost her the job she had once cherished, but that the respect in George’s eyes would have been lost to her. They had always discussed T. C., of course, but usually in relation to his public politics or known gossip or nonsense about her own work. However, since Dilman had come to office, there had been even fewer of these discussions, because her intuition had warned her that Dilman was more vulnerable to loose talk and more opposed by the press.

Yet, in her own way, Edna had tried to give assistance to George. She had made it known to T. C. that she was going steady, that her boy friend was a habitué of the West Wing lobby, so that T. C. would be more aware of George Murdock. And T. C. had been, for on several occasions George had been invited to intimate off-the-record briefings (reserved for the select handful of White House veterans) and paid-for administration trips that he would not have otherwise rated. Recently, whenever the opportunity presented itself, she had begun to mention George’s name to President Dilman, too. (“If you need me, Mr. President, I’ll be dining with my boy friend, George Murdock, of Tri-State Syndicate, at the Iron Gate Inn.”) She was never sure that Dilman heard her.

Even though George did not complain about his meager income, she was certain that it was his economic straits that inhibited him from discussing marriage. Except for the small amount he had been able to put into a few speculative stocks, she knew that he did not earn enough to save. Until he did, there was little chance of his proposing marriage. There was one hope on the far horizon, hinted at by George. He had an Uncle Victor in Hawaii, wealthy, retired, and now seventy-nine years old. George was a favorite of this uncle, and was undoubtedly written into the old man’s last will as the heir to a considerable sum. But the Waikiki sun appeared to have rejuvenated Uncle Victor. He had not been ill once since Edna had been going with George. Still, that was a hope, a possibility, something.

Sometimes Edna became desperate at the waiting. Once, on her own, she had planned to go to Tim Flannery, who was so nice, and ask him if he would take on George as a Press Department assistant. She had rehearsed her request, a beautiful and touching one. When the occasion had arisen, she could not make her speech. She had perceived that Flannery would have had to consult T. C., and whatever he might decide, it would put her in a bad light. Using her confidential position.

And so her directionless life with George had gone on with no merging of their separate paths into a single path in sight. Her father brought the situation up at least once every other month in his short, stilted letters from the farm outside Milwaukee, but she never tried to explain, beyond saying that George was still her good friend and implying that she was still behaving in a way that would not disgrace anyone back home.

In fact, most often, it was she, not George, who was disturbed by their seemingly pointless relationship. She had tried to tell him, without telling him, that she was the kind of girl who did not need much, who was not demanding. She had tried to tell him that the only riches in life to which she aspired were someone she cared for and a decent home where she could bear and raise wonderful children. Did he understand? He had never let on. How she wanted to tell him, if only he would bring it up, that she was ready to move into his confined apartment, ready to continue working while he worked, ready to skimp and save for their family and their future. This was her workable vision of tomorrow. She knew that it was not his. A man who wore lifts in his heels, she supposed, who was sensitive about his acne marks, she supposed, who wrote marvelously but was not read, she supposed, would be too proud for another second best.

Tonight-it was becoming dark, no longer day, not yet night-she could see from his mood, so unusually low-spirited, so ingrown and silent (he had not uttered a word in all their walk to this point), that until now it was his own good nature and ebullience that supported both of them. But not these minutes, not tonight. His depression was only too apparent. She wondered what had caused it. She was afraid to find out.

They had reached the square.

He released her hand. “One second, Edna. Late edition of the Citizen-American is out. I want to see how Zeke Miller let his paper handle your boss’s first press conference.”

She waited in the gloom while he went to the heavily sweatered newsboy. She enjoyed observing George when he was apart from her. His thinning blond hair was so neat, his pointed nose and receding chin made him appear so intellectual (which he was), and the tweed topcoat, even if it was not exactly the latest fashion, gave him the appearance of Fleet Street’s best.

He returned to her, the newspaper opened, his gray eyes darting across it from side to side, then up and down. He was, she remembered, a remarkable speed reader. He clucked his tongue.

“What is it, George?” she asked.

“Congressman Miller’s unloading his big guns,” he said. “Look at the headlines over Reb Blaser’s by-line lead story.”

He pushed the front page before her, sharing it with her, an intimacy she appreciated tonight. She had meant to glance at the front page only briefly, for this kind of news was the last thing on her mind. But the headline pulled her eyes toward it.

The banner headline read:

IS THE WHITE HOUSE REALLY BLACK?

The second headline read: