Reluctantly, she drew off first her right glove, then the revealing left.

"Now just follow my lead," he whispered; then aloud, he said, "Goodness gracious me! Where is your ring, darling?"

Her eyes narrowed. "If this is some vicious stunt meant to embarrass me..." She lifted her forefinger and pointed at his heart.

All around them, ears that had been straining in their direction since they sat down (and particularly since his heartfelt 'ai-i-i!') now fairly vibrated, as bodies leaned towards them, although no one was so obvious as to actually turn and look.

"I told you, darling heart," he continued aloud, "that Grandma's ring was too large for your dainty finger. But, impatient little imp that you are, you couldn't wait until I had the jeweller... ah... smallen it, could you?" He wrinkled his nose at her as he picked her gloves up from the table.

"Smallenit?" she echoed, promising herself she would pay him back for that 'impatient little imp' business. And as for his nose wrinkling...

"Now what am I going to tell Mother? She'll be heartbroken to learn that Granny's ring has been— Well, I'll be hornswaggled!" He was pinching the ring finger of her left glove. "Here it is! It slipped off with your glove. You silly billy, you."

"Silly billy?"

He 'milked' the nonexistent ring down the finger of the glove, then he reached inside and pinched the air between his thumb and forefinger and stuffed the bit of captured nothing into his watch pocket, which he patted protectively. "And there it stays, snookums, until I have a chance to... uh... smallify it. Hubby knows best," he said, wagging his finger at her, and he could almost feel the silent applause of the entire dining car. She, with her actress's instinct, was even more aware of the silent applause than he... and she hated it. And as for that wagging finger...!

He slipped back into their now-habitual undertone. "Be honest and admit that I have the gift of invention necessary to be a successful playwright."

"If all it takes are the instincts and tactics of a confidence trickster, then maybe so."

"I've given myself three years to make it in Parisian theater."

"It might take longer than that with lines like 'I'll be hornswaggled!' And if you don't 'make it' in three years? What then?"

"Well, in that case, I'll... I don't know. It's risky to consider failure. It puts dangerous ideas into the mind of the goddess of Fortune. What about you? How long have you given yourself to make it as an interpreter of terribly, terribly significant social dramas?"

"As long as it takes."

"There's the girl! Now, to build up your strength for the long climb towards fame, riches, and social impact, perhaps you'd better start on those oysters."

No longer burdened with gloves, she dug in with undisguised gusto; but now it was he who seemed suddenly to lose his appetite.

"What's wrong?" she asked, manipulating her oyster fork with address.

"These oysters make me think about my sister."

"A pearl of a girl, is she? Or sort of slimy? Or all steamed up over your leaving her behind?"

"She adores oysters. And she hasn't eaten a thing since we received my brother's telegram telling us that he had succumbed to the wiles of... well, that he had fallen totally and eternally in love with your Sophie, and intended to marry her immediately, whether or not the family approved. Here it is, after eight, and my sister can't even go to a restaurant. I am carrying our traveling money, naturally."

"Naturally? Why is it 'natural' for men to carry the money? But I wouldn't worry about your sister." She finished her fourth oyster and fell upon the fifth. "I'll bet that at this very minute she's sitting across from my brother, demolishing a platter of oysters. Dieudonne would surely-"

"Dieudonne?"

"Don't bother, I've heard them all. Dieudonne would surely have insisted that your poor abandoned sister join him for dinner. My brother always does the correct thing. He is the perfect embodiment of all things conventional-even down to conventional standards of kindness and compassion... so long as it's towards 'the right people'."

"You sound as though you don't like your bother."

"Oh, I love him, of course. But, no, I don't like him very much."

"That's exactly how I feel about my sister!"

"Who's probably right now sitting across from him at a fashionable restaurant (he patronizes only fashionable restaurants and dumps them as soon as their popularity begins to pale). I can see him sitting there, looking around to see who's looking at him as he regales your sister with details of the punishments he intends to wreck on you tomorrow, when the next train brings him to Cambo-les-Bains. And your sister is probably demurely dabbing her oyster-stained fingertips with her napkin and trying to defend you."

"That shows what you know. She'd be the last person in the world to defend me. Ever since she came to 'visit' me in Paris, totally uninvited, she's been making my life a hell."

"Good girl."

"She spends all day squandering her share of the family inheritance on clothes, then all night complaining to me about my failure to introduce her to any 'nice' people. ...What do you mean, 'good girl'?"

"Then why don't you?"

"Why don't I what?"

"Introduce her to 'nice' people."

"I don't know any 'nice' people!"

"I believe that."

The waiter replaced the depleted platter of oysters with poulet Marengofor her and a wine-rich daubefor him. As she began eating with artless zest, she asked, "So your sister's a snob, is she? Well, she and my brother should hit it off famously. He would like nothing better than to limit his patients to the fashionable gratinof Paris. The two of them could rise through the ranks of polite society, advancing side by side from dull dinner parties with 'correct' people, to even duller dinners with 'important' people-great lavish feeds in which each course costs enough to keep an Armenian village from starvation for a week, and there's at least one liveried servant for every guest with his snout in the golden trough, and— What are you doing?"

"I'm just scratching down a note or two. I have a pretty good memory for dialogue, but you rattle on at a terrifying rate. Still, if I can capture your basic energy and melody, I can flesh you out later."

"I'm not sure I want you fleshing me out. I have all the flesh I-stop writing and eat your stew. It'll get cold." But he continued scribbling.

People at neighboring tables would have given anything for a peek at what the bridegroom was writing in that little notebook of his. A love message, I'll wager. Something he'd be embarrassed to have us overhear. Oh, the young, the young! Well, at least he's eating his stew now. It would have been a shame to let it get cold, just as she told him. She's the sensible one. She'll wear the trousers in that house, you mark my words.

She looked off into space, her eyes defocused, a temporarily forgotten piece of chicken balanced on her fork. Then she said half to herself, "I don't really blame her."

"Er-r-r-r... No, no, don't tell me. Let me work it out. Let's see... ah-h... you don't blame my sister for not defending me against your brother's assaults on my character? Right?"

"Wrong. It's mysister I don't blame. The poor little fluff-head is in love... however unworthy the object of her affections may be."

"Well, I don't blame my brother, either. He's a victim of the romantic traditions of our family. My greatgrandfather, my grandfather, my father-each of them fell in love at first sight, and each of them snatched up the woman who had captured his heart and carried her away-in two cases, to the shock and scandal of the village, as they had been promised elsewhere."