“Yes, that’s exactly what I meant,” Michael said. “Vocabulary reflects the accepted world view of the period. Psychological terminology, however badly used, indicates our rejection of the cruder superstitions of the past.”

There was silence when he stopped speaking. Linda sat upright in her chair, feeling, but not responding to, the intense anxiety of Gordon’s regard. Belatedly, Michael seemed to sense the change in the atmosphere.

“I try to avoid jargon of all kinds in my writing,” he said awkwardly. “Just as I try to avoid strained interpretations of human relationships based on the standard perversions.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” Gordon said heartily, and Michael laughed. Linda’s hand clenched around the glass Briggs handed her. The secretary went to refill the other glasses.

“Gordon’s dying to know what you’ll say about him,” Linda said. “But of course he’s too smart to ask outright.”

Gordon started to speak, but Michael anticipated him, so smoothly that perhaps no one except Linda noticed how he used the words like a barrier, to shield Gordon from the malice of the speech.

“I don’t know myself, yet. What I’m doing now is soaking up atmosphere, if you’ll pardon the expression. And very pleasant it is-thank you.”

He lifted his glass with a slight bow that was aimed, impartially, at a spot midway between his host and hostess.

“We’re trying to prejudice you,” Gordon said, smiling.

“I’m always prejudiced right from the first. I’m in favor of people.”

“How nice of you,” Linda murmured.

This time it was Gordon who came to the aid of his guest. The two of them, Linda thought irritably, worked together as smoothly as Laurel and Hardy. The flush on Michael’s face subsided as Gordon talked, blandly and inconsequentially, of words and their meanings, of books and authors and libraries.

“I covet your library,” Michael said, looking appreciatively around the room. “When I was an impractical college student I dreamed of having a place like this.”

“It’s copied from a library in an English country house,” Linda said. She smiled sweetly at Gordon. “Volume for volume.”

She finished her drink, and Briggs waddled over to take the empty glass.

“I don’t think we have time for another, do we?”

The pause, before Gordon spoke, was just long enough to underline the fact that the mistress of the house should have made this comment. “Didn’t you order dinner at eight, darling? Ah, yes-here’s Haworth.”

The butler’s quiet “Dinner is served” brought the men to their feet. Linda rose more slowly.

“I’ll take my drink with me-darling,” she said.

Taking the glass Briggs handed her, she led the way to the dining room.

It was a good many years before Michael could think of his first dinner with the Randolphs without a reminiscent shudder. His host was too nervous to eat, his hostess steadily drank herself, not into a coma but into sharp-tongued virulence, and the pallid secretary stealthily gobbled enormous quantities of food.

When Linda Randolph first entered the library, he realized that she had been drinking; but that fact seemed irrelevant in the presence of such unusual beauty. Her hair was the rare, true black, with a sheen like that of silk; its heavy masses framed a face modeled with a precise delicacy that he had, up till now, seen only in a few masterpieces of sculpture. It was not a conventional type of beauty; many people would think it flawed by the character which gave the features their final definition-a character too strong, too individual for a woman’s face. She would never get past the semifinals in a Miss Wheat Cereal contest. But the Wheat Cereal queens didn’t have the kind of face that launched ships or burned towers. Linda Randolph did. Helen and Cleopatra probably hadn’t been conventional beauties either.

He knew why he had thought of Cleopatra. Linda…what an insipid name for that dark, exotic girl. The heavy, gold-trimmed dress emphasized the Egyptian look, but it didn’t suit her; stiff with embroidery and gold thread, it stood away from her body and made her look like a well-dressed doll. Her shoulders seemed bowed under the weight of it. She was too thin.

How thin he didn’t realize until she came nearer and sat down in a chair only a few feet away. The contrast between the splendid, remote figure in the doorway and the same woman at close range was a little shocking. Michael assumed she was painted and powdered, as all women were, but the best cosmetics in the world could not conceal the underlying pallor and tension of her face. Her hands, dwarfed by the wide sleeves of the robe, looked like little white claws.

He had known a lot of people who drank too much, and some who were genuine alcoholics. Linda Randolph wasn’t an alcoholic yet. Not quite.

She held her liquor well, he had to admit that. She’d probably had a few before she came down, but her conversation in the library had been reasonably coherent, even bright. Those digs at her husband…Well, married couples did that, especially after a few drinks. In vino veritas-and, apparently, the closer the relationship, the nastier the truth. Parents and children, husbands and wives…Maybe that was why he’d chosen to remain a bachelor.

During the meal she finished her drink and then started on the wine-a superb Montrachet, too good to be swallowed down like water. The silent butler kept her glass filled. Well, Michael thought, what else can he do? She spoke to the man sharply once, when he was a little slow. Gordon, who would probably behave like a gentleman on his way to be hanged, couldn’t object without risking a scene. But his conversational abilities declined noticeably. Finally, in desperation, Michael broke the rule he had made, about discussing business during social hours, and started asking questions.

“Athletic career?” Gordon smiled, and shrugged. “I quit while I was ahead. Never had the necessary motivation to become a professional. That takes concentration. I was interested in too many other things.”

He broke off, to sample the wine that was being served with the next course, and Michael brooded. Motivation? Lack of interest? That was the obvious answer to the enigma of Gordon Randolph-athlete, writer, politician, teacher-who had abandoned, of his own choice, each of the professions in which he was expected to excel. The man who had everything-and who wanted nothing. But lack of ambition was too facile an answer.

“Anyhow,” Randolph went on, with a nod at the butler, “I was never an all-round athletic type.”

“Tennis and swimming,” Michael said. “You know, I’d have thought you’d be a good quarterback. You have the build for it, and the coordination.”

Gordon grinned.

“I’m a coward,” he said amiably. “Didn’t care for the prospect of being jumped on by all those big, booted feet.”

“No contact sports,” Michael said thoughtfully. “And no team sports.”

“That’s rather perceptive. Even if it does make me sound like a cowardly snob. Or a snobbish coward.”

“Maybe just a man of sense,” Michael said, smiling. “I can see why those activities might have bored you eventually. What a lot of people hold against you is your failure to write another book.”

“Again, I stopped while I was ahead. They say, don’t they, that everyone has one good book in him? But how many people have two?”

“Most people don’t even have one. And very few have a book as good as The Smoke of Her Burning. It’s a good title.”

“Rather unsubtle, I’m afraid.”

“The allusion is to Revelations?”

“Yes. The destruction of the whore of Babylon. Very theatrical.”

The conversation had degenerated into a dialogue. Michael preferred it that way. Briggs never had his mouth empty long enough to frame an intelligible comment, and Linda had relapsed into a silence so profound that she might not have been there at all. Only the dress, holding its own shape, sitting empty at the foot of the table…It was a gruesomely vivid image, and when his hostess spoke, Michael flinched.