The Mask and the Maiden

Just you explain to me how any respectable girl could possibly think of doing such a thing.

You mean to say that nutty dame really thought the guy was going to marry her?

Had she ever acted out a psychoneurotic impulse of this description before?

I am glad you have asked these questions, gentlemen. Each of them hinges on motive, and this, if I may say so, is the attitude of maturity. I feared at first you wanted the coarse and comic story which has already been told over and over again, with people laughing till the tears rolled down their cheeks, throughout the length and breadth of Viridian Springs, and probably as far afield as Tucson and Phoenix by this time. But as we mature we become a little allergic to the pratfall, and often we find something, even in the most ludicrous of human mischances, which can bring on symptoms like those of other allergies; a constriction of the throat, for example, a sniffling irritability of the nasal passages and a smarting and watering of the eyes. The tears, indeed, might roll down without the accompaniment of the laughter, as happened with the unfortunate young woman herself. And, speaking of tears, you will be interested to know that not only did Elinor Baker cry herself to sleep every night after her incredible blunder, but she had done so, almost as bitterly and almost as often, for months and years before it.

You don't say. But tell us why...

Elinor had reached the age of 30 without ever having been loved. Certainjoys are the absolute birthright of every girl, and they should be hers when she is of an age and inclination for them, or else a cruel and shameful deprivation has been inflicted upon her, and, as the poet says, "else a great prince in prison lies." The joys in question include but are not limited to kisses, embraces, whisperings, quarrels, forgiveness, bearlike hugs, the intimate and permissible use of improper expressions, wild outcries in the dark, maternity, the security of the heart, smacks on the behind and being pulled back by a strong arm when stepping in front of a bus. No greater prince than Elinor Baker's immense capacity to give and receive such joys; no crueller prison than the accident of the flesh that denied them to her! Elinor's face was extremely unattractive to men.

(continued on page 62) Mask and the maiden (continued from page 47)

However, she was not a freak. Her face, though uninviting to kiss, was quite agreeable to contemplate. It radiated the honest warmth and friendliness of her nature. Her other features were by no means hideous or grotesque, but collectively they gave an impression of sexlessness which was nonetheless forbidding for being entirely false. In moments of emotional stress this impression was altogether beyond the power of any such merely negative term to convey; her face screwed itself into a frowning, staring, lip-twisting earnestness which rendered her most utterly unkissable in the very moments she most desperately hoped to be kissed.

It's quite obvious this was some sort of inhibition, the result of some trauma suffered in infancy.

We all have our little inhibitions, which, if we struggle bravely, will afford us the pleasure of overcoming them, or the even greater delight of having them overcome by the person most agreeable to us. Elinor had, of course, been an ugly little girl...

Now look, pal, you don't have to give us the dame's whole back history, for the love of Mike! Can I fill 'em up for you?

Very well. We will not contemplate the miseries of ugly little girls. We will have another drink instead. I wished only to establish that Elinor was no more inhibited than most of us: she knew the facts of life and she had no sort of objection to them whatsoever. As deputy librarian at Viridian Springs she had free access to a wide range of books on sex and psychology, and she studied them in the hope that each next page would reveal some tremendous secret to her. They told her very little that she did not know already, although in some instances she had not been aware that she knew it. They did not tell her how to behave on the few occasions she went out with a young man; nor could she have profited by it had they done so. She had no clear awareness of the element in her shyness which made it repellent instead of seductive, or of the element in her rare and quaking boldnesses which gave them all the blood-chilling ugliness of unconcealed desperation. She was not in the least a prude; her conversation was as free as is right and moderately improper for a young woman in the present year. When in company of her most intimate friends, especially a certain Joan, who was said to be "quite a gal," and a certain Betty, who had the affair with the married dentist in Tucson, she would permit herself the use of a four-letter word; not, perhaps, the one you are thinking of, but another.

Lay it on the line, Mister; you got me interested. Which one? What other?

She would use that which is chalked on the fence behind Guevara Street, but not that which is pencilled on the wall of the mens' room at the back here. There are those who use both and those who use neither; the essential point is that Elinor, in her speech as in her behaviour, allowed herself certain freedoms but respected certain taboos.

Well, if she was as normal as you describe her, why did she fail to adjust instead of crying herself to sleep for months and years at a stretch?

I'd like to know what this baby was like from the neck down. Because I got a theory that if a dame's well-stacked...

In replying to the second question I can also answer the first. It should be clear that Elinor's body was in no way deficient; otherwise she would never have conceived the fatal and fantastic notion of entering stark naked into the presence of Mr. Henry McBride.

As a matter of fact her body was extremely beautiful; so beautiful, indeed, that if I refrain from the use of words like goddess or Greek statue, it is mainly because these words suggest a certain remoteness in the one case, and something cold and lifeless in the other. Elinor's body was extremely near and warm and alive.

It was nearest of all, naturally, to Elinor herself, who was destined to be consumed by its warmth. She would sometimes find herself standing in front of the mirror, her poor face, uglier than ever with its look of earnestness and wretchedness and apprehension, looking back at her from above that Venus body, that body which she had let down by having so unfortunÊte a face. In the end this aggrieved and raging body caused her to cry out that very word which is written in pencil on the wall of your mens' room, on the right-hand side as you go in. And this word, as I said before, was one which in normal circumstances she would on no account have uttered. Afterwards, she cried herself to sleep. Sometimes, she only snivelled; at others she sobbed in a manner altogether too painful to contemplate.

That's an exaggerated reaction, and therefore neurotic in itself.

In my opinion it's a plain and simple case of low-down, despicable lust.

Low-down if you will, for so it needs must be, but as for lust being despicable, there I can hardly go all the way with you. I find those qualities despicable which tend to diminish a person; smallness of soul, for example, or lack of understanding or of charity. Lust is an addition distorted by mischance. What is it, after all, but love defeated of its object, lost, crippled, blind, tormented and raging?

You said it, Mister! I been in the navy. But answer me this one: if she had bust, waist and hips like you were saying, why the hell didn't she get hold of one of these Bikini bathing suits, and maybe a big floppy hat, and go to some beach or pool or somewhere, and give some fella an eyeful?

You must remember that the nearest ocean beaches are those of Southern California, where the hotels are not of the cheapest, and where what begins with a two-piece bathing suit, and may end with less, must pass through an intermediate stage in which one or two attractive dresses are indispensable. Elinor considered $500 to be the minimum sum on which she could finance a vacation on the coast, and her take-home pay amounted to only $67.50 a week. Nevertheless, by the third week of last May she had attained this objective, and it was her intention to spend her three-week summer holiday at Laguna Beach. She had considered Malibu and Santa Monica, but feared competition from film aspirants, whereas Laguna has the reputation of attracting people of artistic leanings. One must admire the vigilance and sapience of the sexual instinct, which, even in this confused and unworldly girl, had somehow, at some time, on heaven knows what passing contact, made a certain observation on the appearance of the wives of artists, and now brought it forth to guide her in her choice. I think you spoke also of swimming pools, which certainly would have been cheaper, but when it comes to swimming pools, I can only invite you to consider the peculiar social structure of Viridian Springs.

Apart from this dirty scandal, I'd say Viridian Springs is just as normal a community as you'd find anywhere. I'd like to know what you mean by that word "peculiar."

In New England it would be the most ordinary town imaginable, but where else in the Southwestern deserts can you find a township of 5000 or so, in which at least 20 families of considerable wealth have remained and ramified to the second and third generation? As a result, we now have, with these 20 families as a nucleus, a well established and definitely separated upper class.

The springs themselves, remember, do not rise here in our thriving business district, but around the hill half a mile to the west, in the section now called Vallambrosa. There are the springs; there are the springs; there are the trees and the enormous gardens; there are the old houses of the original mine owners and citrus growers. There too is Mrs. Dunlop's Frank Lloyd Wright house, and the Neutra and the (continued overleaf) Mask and the maiden (continued from page 62) Schindler and the Gregory Ain of the younger generation. There is our claim to consider ourselves the Santa Barbara of South Arizona, and there, gentlemen, are the swimming pools, all of them, or all but one.

Elinor, though she was on Christian name terms with many of her contemporaries in this privileged district, especially those whose parents had democratically sent them for a year oÊ two to the grade school here, was not one of them, and was not asked to swim. The gulf in her case was not immensely wide; had she been outstandingly pretty, or played a first-class game of tennis, someone or other would have invited her sooner or later; as it was, she remained outside. There is only one other place where there is a swimming pool, and that is the Country Club.

Elinor, like many others, frequently looked and longed upon the Country Club. It is sad that the only people invited to join are those who have, or could afford to have, swimming pools of their own. We are here in an arid and a burning land; I sometimes wonder why the entire middle class of Viridian Springs does not issue forth on hands and knees and crawl up towards the Country Club like desert wanderers in thirsty pursuit of a mirage.

You got me crawling along, Mister, with my tongue hanging out, waiting to hear what happened.

The happenings began in the third week of May this year, when Elinor suffered a shattering experience. Elinor, unoccupied at her desk one morning, fell into one of those reveries to which all of us here are subject when the wind, laden with dust and dreams and uneasiness, blows up from Mexico. She was recalled to her senses by the swing of the library door, and almost bereft of them when she saw, doodled by her fingertip on the dusty margin of her desk, the word she cried out with such shameful intensity in the hours that she dared not remember.

Really, Elinor! said old Mrs. Dunlop at that moment. Don't you hear me? Whatever's the matter? My dear girl, you look as if you'd seen a ghost.

Elinor covered the horrible scribble with her hand. Oh, I don't know, Mrs. Dunlop; I'm not feeling too good, I guess.

Of course not. You work too hard. The library stays open too late.

But, Mrs. Dunlop, I get off every other evening at six. I think maybe the heat is too much for me.

Now, Elinor, you know as well as I do we have the best and healthiest climate of anywhere. A little heat sometimes, but no humidity. A girl like you should make use of our advantages. You should swim, you should play tennis. Exercise and fun! Barbecues and things! Dances too! I'm an old crock now, but when I was a girl I never missed a dance. Some said I was fast. I told them to go to a certain place I won't mention.

Elinor, covering the dreadful word with her hand, replied that these pleasures were not easily come by in Viridian Springs.

But, my dear, dear girl, you are talking, well, not quite as sensibly as you usually do. What about the Country Club?

Now, just a moment! Since you seem to be putting up a bit of special pleading on behalf of this young woman, just tell us how you happen to know every word that was said on this particular occasion.

I was there, my dear sir, I was there.

You know, Elinor, we have everything at the Country Club, tennis and dancing and swimming, only the pool is under repair because of a leak. And where else in the town will you find a Drama Group and Sunday Painters and a garden club and flower arrangement classes and talks and musical things-only I've no ear – and everything as modern and up-to-date as you can possibly imagine? We are not in the least "small town" you know; we always pride ourselves on keeping abreast of the times. And you know we're never had to raise our entrance fee; it's still only $500.

Now Elinor was very fond of Mrs. Dunlop, as a cat may be fond of a queen, and Mrs. Dunlop was fond of Elinor, as a queen may be fond of a cat. Queens, of course, have many distractions, but when they suddenly find time for their pent-up fondnesses they are in a position to express them. Seeing Elinor shake her head with a rather shattered smile, Mrs. Dunlop bent over and lowered her voice. And, my dear, if that's a difficulty, just leave it to me. I have my own secret ways of getting people in without their paying at all.

I expect you have. I think I can guess what they are. It's so generous, and I do appreciate it, Mrs. Dunlop, more than I can say. But it isn't the money. I can't join unless they ask me, and they haven't, and they never will.

Elinor Baker, you're as crazy as a bed bug. I'm asking you myself at this very moment, and so is Mr. McBride. Mr. McBride, come over here and ask Elinor to join the Country Club.

Why, yes, Mrs. Dunlop. Miss Baker, you must join at once. Mrs. Dunlop insists on it; she is very domineering, and we all have to do what she says.

Note the alibi, carefully inserted for quotation in the event of reproaches on the part of other members, who might, he thought, consider Elinor socially unacceptable.

Make her join, Mr. McBride. She's just about my favorite girl in all Viridian Springs. If an old woman can't persuade her, then a young man must.

I wish you would, he said.

Simple words, but accompanied by a smile. A smile has the advantage of not being quotable. This was the McBride smile at its most winning, and it won. Elinor's hand still covered the dreadful word, obliterated by this time, if such a word can ever be obliterated, which of course it both can and cannot be, but under the extraordinary warmth and friendliness – I believe "sincerity" is the term used in the trade – of Mr. McBride's smiling eyes, she felt its ugliness quicken with something like beauty.

Why, yes, Mrs. Dunlop, I'd love to.

So, with a word and a vote and the payment of her $500, Elinor became a member of the Country Club. If you think she encountered snubs and snobbery, you are as much mistaken as was Mr. McBride on this point. Clubs and aristocracies, when well-established and secure, have this in common with the swimming pools we have been speaking of: once you are in, you are in.

And, oh, the kindness of Mr. Henry McBride! He, when he saw Elinor so well received, forgot all his doubts about sponsoring her, and, perhaps a little exaggerating the depth and constancy of Mrs. Dunlop's interest in "just about her favorite girl," made it his business – I use the word with intention – to be quite tenderly attentive, even when the good old lady was not, as rarely she was, except when artistic activities were in process, present at the Club. I believe, though I have no direct evidence in support of this particular, that he thought Elinor might report his kindness to her patroness, and for this reason he laid it on thick and heavy.

I think I told you, sir, that lust is only love deprived of an object. The immense love of which Elinor was capable now found its object in Mr. Henry McBride. At once her body abdicated its tyranny and enrolled itself in the service of this glorious emotion, consenting henceforth to ask no pleasure except in the bestowal of pleasure upon the beloved. Moreover, this newly-tamed body, this eager convert, this raw recruit, disdainful of caution, impatient of niceties, brought all its abounding health and energy and enthusiasm to the cause, and demanded only to unfurl its beauty like a flag, to press forward, to overthrow all barriers and to enthrone in triumph that which is so devoutly believed to (continued overleaf) Mask and the maiden (continued from page 64) be right.

There is nothing he can ever see in me, but it's enough just to be around and to love him. These were brave words, and like many of their kind they were followed by a sigh. Her body, lifting its magnificent breasts on that same sigh, cried out that he had never really seen her at all. It is true the swimming pool remained out of commission during the first few weeks of Elinor's membership, owing to an obdurate leak caused by a continuing shift of the subsoil. Elinor scarcely regretted the pool; she was afloat in a diviner element, uplifted, cleansed, braced and caressed by the bubbling waters of happiness.

Clubs have been compared to swimming pools, and happiness may be likened to both. An important feature all three have in common is the possession of a deep end and a shallow end. In the deep end you may drown; if you dive into the shallow end you may break your head. The deep end of Elinor's happiness was her love for Mr. McBride; the shallow end of the Viridian Springs Country Club is, I think, the modernity of its cultural activities, so extraordinary for a small Western town, and its atmosphere of sophisticated freedom. You would really think you were in New York. However, you are not.

One evening Elinor was sitting with a few others on the terrace, and happily lapping up one of our justly celebrated Old Fashioneds, which she considered to be the very best Old Fashioned she had ever drunk in her life, and which, since it contained whiskey twice as good as the ordinary, and twice as much of it, probably deserved the distinction. The talk was all of the forthcoming production of the Lysistrata on the part of the Drama Group. It was to be staged by Fleming Parrot, who is not only wonderful with grouping and sets, but who is one half, perhaps the better half, of that firm of interior decorators which has had such an effect on the tastes of our younger generation. Mr. Parrot had decreed that the play was to be presented boldly, in modern dress, and yet, classically, in masks. The ladies were to wear tennis dresses, as combining the classical and the modern, and with this costume and the mask in mind, and feeling she would read her lines with more understanding than some others, he had given Elinor quite an effective little part, and thus so replenished her already brimming cup that happiness was quite visibly slopping all around her. People nearby found themselves agreeably splashed by it, as they sat discussing the cast with Fleming Parrot.

Have you asked the S.N.s yet?

Of course. Naturally. We'd be nowhere without the S.N.s.

This was new to Elinor. What does that mean? Who are they, the S.N.s?

The S.N.s? Don't say you don't know! Rachel Bickling and Maureen Biedelmeyer, of course.

But what does it mean? Why do you call them that?

Well, there they are, over there. You go and ask them.

Elinor never minded having her leg pulled a little, so she at once downed the remains of her Old Fashioned and walked over to where Rachel Bickling and Maureen Biedelmeyer were sharing a table. Mrs. Bickling is small, dark, with an attractive monkey face and huge, almost black eyes like those in a Roman portrait. She is a product of Park Avenue, and perhaps the most sophisticated person in all the Club. Maureen is the least so; she is so beautiful and blonde and dumb that strangers think she must be from Hollywood.

They told me to ask you why you are called the S.N.s.

My dear, how nice of you not to know! Shall we tell her, Maureen? I think we'd better or it'll look as if we're ashamed. S. is for Seen, dear, and N. for Naked. Which we were, and we shall never forget it, because they won't ever let us. We told only our very best friends, and they told theirs. We thought we were theirs, but it turned out other people were. Anyway it was only our future husbands who saw us, so we got made honest women of. Shall I tell you how it was? Or let Maureen tell you how it was with me, and I'll tell you how it was with her. It may be more lush that way. Go on, Maureen, don't spare my blushes.

Well, she was in this hotel in New York and Peer Bickling was there in the very next suite and they got acquainted, and you know how Peer is, if you ask him gin or vodka he'll be half an hour making up his mind. You see there was some model he was going out with and he just loved talking to Rachel but he liked going out with this model and he couldn't make up his mind. And he was staying in 9 and she was staying in 6. And somehow one of the screws came out of the 6, I mean the metal one on the door, so it slipped around and made a 9. Because if you turn a 6 upside down it makes a 9. So Rachel was getting dressed for the evening and sort of wandering around looking for a cigarette in the living room and in walks Peer Bickling and she hadn't got a sÊitch on and then he made up his mind right away. Didn't he, Rachel?

He certainly did. Now I'll tell Maureen's, Elinor. It's much more romantic. You know where Maureen's folks used to live, in that little old frame house where the road from Tucson comes down to the Ditch and makes the bad turn; where there's that tremendous great rock beside the road?

Well, that was the summer Jerry Biedelmeyer bought himself a radio station in Tucson, and it was sort of a new toy, so he used to drive in every evening and come back about 1:00 o'clock in the morning. So one day he was driving in and he had a blowout just as he was taking the curve by the rock, and Maureen's old man went out to help him change the wheel and Maureen went along too to hold the nuts and bolts and things, and she and Jerry got talking, and the simple country girl lost her heart to the dark, handsome stranger in the great big, new convertible. Isn't that romantic? And he looked as if he liked her all right, but all of a sudden the wheel was fixed and Jerry got in and off he went to his radio station.

After that Maureen used to see him streak by in the evening, and he'd wave his hand, and that was that. And she'd sometimes sit at the window after midnight and watch for that big cream-colored convertible to slow up at the bend and then speed off into the night. Or else she'd be lying in bed and she'd see the lights of it on the ceiling. And the worst of it was that Cinderella thought if she could only have had a little more talk with Prince Charming – well, he'd have wanted just a little more, and one thing might have led to another.

So, what with the heat and everything, one night Maureen thought she just couldn't live any longer unless she took a swim in the Ditch. To cool off, you know. And she had to creep and creep to get out without waking anyone, and she didn't dare look around for her bathing suit, but practically no one ever comes along that road at night so she didn't worry. She just plain forgot about Jerry Biedelmeyer. Or so she says. Don't you, honey?

Well, she was in the Ditch and she saw the lights of a car in the distance, and she completely lost her head, and instead of ducking under the water she climbed out and tried to reach the shelter of the paternal roof. But of course the car was coming much faster than she thought, and it slowed up at the bend, and in fact it had to stop dead because someone had left her father's hand-truck sticking way out into the road. And there was Maureen, rivetted to the spot, in the full glare of the headlights, right up against the face of (continued on page 78) Mask and the maiden (continued from page 66) that enormous rock where there's not as much as a bush or a blade of grass even for cover. Of course she was terribly upset, and I must say for Jerry that he was very chivalrous and instead of driving off hell for leather as perhaps some men would have done, he got out and consoled her to the best of his ability.

You may imagine that these stories burst upon Elinor with all the brightness of Jerry Biedelmeyer's headlights making clear the road she was to follow, but if you do you will be very wrong. She felt and showed the natural degree of amusement, but once she had rejoined the other group the incidents themselves faded from her mind, or sank into it, leaving only a bright residue, like panned-out gold, to add to the excitement and admiration she felt for a life that was so free and cheerful and worked out so well in the end.

You mean to say she didn't get the idea from what these other dames told her?

So much to the contrary that, had she remembered these stories in detail, I think she would not have done what she did, because then an element of calculation would have entered in, such as would have been entirely incompatible with the love that irradiated her whole being. Her mind and her body were now unanimous in telling her that this love was beautiful and right. It is one of the lovely dangers of unfilled love, or lust, as you, my dear sir, like to call it, that when the body and mind are in complete harmony it is because the latter has made all the necessary concessions. And it is one of the lovely dangers of stories we have heard and forgotten that they sometimes re-appear apparelled in all the glory and Eden-freshness of absolute originality, which accounts, by the way, for the incredible number of lawsuits that be-devil our entertainment industries.

During the weeks that followed, Elinor, though she tried hard to be sensible, began to be a little less convinced that there was nothing that Henry McBride could ever see in her. This was a serious error, for Henry McBride, like a knight in a legend, was already unshakeably dedicated to a damsel he had seen in a vision, of whom he knew neither her name nor her dwelling, nor what wastes he might have to traverse or ogres to overcome in order to find and win her, but only that she combined the face of Maureen Biedelmeyer with the fortune of Rachel Bickling. But although Elinor's error was grave, it was not an entirely presumptuous one. After all, Mr. McBride, though damnably likely to succeed, is only in the earliest process of doing so. He is a newcomer, a partner so junior in his firm that he is practically an employee. Elinor was able tenderly to regard him as nearer her own status than to that of the wealthy young men of Vallambrosa.

His kindnesses continued, and they were marked by an indefinable something that seemed to suggest he would be yet warmer and closer if only he could bring himself to overstep some little barrier that lay between himself and Elinor. The plain truth is that, endeavoring through Elinor to win the heart of Mrs. Dunlop, he economically used up for the purpose what might be described as leftovers from his treatment of the older lady. His manner was at once caressing and respectful, at once familiar and shy. It was exactly right for use on a lady of Mrs. Dunlop's age and wealth and position, where the barrier would be naturally ascribed to a proper diffidence, but to Elinor this manner was deceptive in the extreme. Her body, flushing at a familiar word and throbbing at the rememberance of a caressing smile, poured forth through every gland an intoxicating insistence that the most beautiful interpretation must be the true one, and that all his little advances were the expression of a state of being in love without knowing it, as in the motion pictures, and that his shy retreats before the unspecified barrier were due to her unfortunate face.

Elinor and her body now being one, she had come to disown her face. It was this alien and falsifying face that stood in the way of the unspeakable happiness that being in love, and knowing it, might bring to Mr. Henry McBride.

On the night of the triumphant production of the Lysistrata, Elinor got rid of her face. The masks, executed by Parrot and Bigelow, were simple, light and airy, and extremely attractive. They were done in somewhat the classical manner, but softened and sweetened as if for a rather good perfume advertisement. In combination with the tennis dresses and sandals the effect was not at all as bad as it sounds, and Fleming Parrot had been careful to arrange a variety of poses for Elinor such as were admirably adapted to bring out the full persuasiveness of her arguments in the cause of peace. Certain of these poses brought her into the most thrilling relationship with Henry McBride himself, who was also playing a small effective part.

Our Drama Group has the advantage of a friendly audience; applause and curtain calls are accorded even to its worst failures. The Lysistrata, so Greek, so modern, so sexy, so bawdy, and yet perfectly all right because it's a classic, received a positive ovation. Every performer who had a part with a name to it had to take an individual bow, and in a spot-`light as bright as the headlights of Jerry Biedelmeyer's convertible.

The curtain was lowered and champagne, like a condensation of the applause, popped anÊ foamed and bubbled in everyone's hand. Tongues wagged 19 to the dozen. Everyone congratulated everyone else. Elinor, you looked absolutely beautiful. I was watching you from the wings. If you'd had no arms and no clothes I'd have thought you were the Venus di Milo.

Some people went up to change and others stayed on the stage talking. More people went up, and at last no one was left but Henry McBride and Elinor and a couple of others. Henry went up and Elinor shortly followed him. The other two went off to dressing rooms near the swimming pool because there was no room for all the cast in the building behind the stage.

I don't know, gentlemen, if you are familiar with the layout of the Country Club. Behind the big hall where the stage is put up there is an old wooden building, its upper floor approached by an outside staircase. This in the old days contained the changing rooms for our golf and tennis players. The ladies' showers are at one end – the gentlemen's at the other. Next to the ladies' showers was Elinor's cubicle, which was very small, as it had been stolen from the shower room at a time when the pressure on space was increasing and our handsome new changing rooms had not yet been built. Before that, the next cubicle to Elinor's had opened into the showers, and this advantage was repeated in the one she occupied, as if in compensation for its lack of space. Thus she had a door through which she entered, a window opposite, a door on her left to the showers, and a door to her right which led to the next cubicle, which was occupied by Mr. Henry McBride.

On her way up the outside staircase Elinor met a whole stream of those whohad retired earlier, changed, and were on their way to the bar. In the corridor above she found an air of emptiness.

This little wooden building is hot at night. Elinor's window was open. Through this window came the heavy scent of a datura blooming in the shrubbery below, and a babble of voices from the nearby bar. But almost at once the voices were submerged under the sound of the radio, tuned up too high, playing Some Enchanted Evening.

Elinor, transported by applause and praise, her mask pushed back on to the top of her head, looked into the long glass and pulled her mask into place again. She unbuttoned and shed her tennis tunic and got rid of certain other things she was wearing, resolving as she did so not to do what she was going to do. She looked into the glass again, and it was beautiful and it was right.

One of those small voices which go on coldly and quietly somewhere deep in our heads even in our most exalted moments suggested: I opened the wrong door; I thought it was the shower. The voice on the radio sang: You will see a stranger. And the wordless voice of her body also surged up like music to which she had no difficulty in fitting words of the purest poetry, and so right. He will see me. He will know. He will come towards me. He will take me in his arms ... Whereupon, simple, deluded, burning with love, lovely in her nakedness and her mask, she threw open the door and stood like an amorous goddess on the threshold of the dressing room of Mr. Henry McBride.

In company with Mr. Henry McBride were seated, a little fatigued, listening to the music, Mrs. Dunlop, Mrs. Carter, old Mr. Frisbee and his grandson Max, just back at home after his first term at Groton. There were a few seconds, which seemed longer, of absolute petrification on the part of everyone present.

The effects of shock are well known to us all. Lawyers advise that, should we become involved in a car crash, we should say as little as possible for fear of making some damaging admission. Elinor, as honest a girl as ever breathed, stood stunned and forgetful of the excuse about the shower, until, pushing up her mask as if to lay bare the last miserable absurdity of the situation, she allowed the truth to burst up out of this inconvenient honesty of hers:

I thought you were alone, she said.

Mr. McBride's high squeak of repudiation was masterly and convincing. God knows what Elinor thought he might have said, assuming she was capable of thinking at all. God knows what he could have said to save her, even assuming he had wanted to. Nevertheless, I take the liberty of hating his guts for not saying it. He was voluble enough with his assurances and his denials when at last the door slammed behind her.

Next day, of course, Elinor resigned from the Club, as was right, proper and universally expected of her. From the material point of view it seems to have been a little precipitate, for had she waited until her resignation was demanded she would almost certainly have had her entrance fee refunded her. With $500 she could have gone away and found a new job. As it was, she was unable to.

I hope I have sufficiently answered your questions, gentlemen. It is nearly 2:00 o'clock. I must be getting back to the inquest.

Naked, burning with love, Elinor threw open the door.