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signal.
    She tried again a moment later. Still busy. Now the importance of reaching Tony had assumed the dimensions of panic. She had to reach him. Had to. She tried her own number. "Hello, Aunt Priscilla? ... Has Tony called? ... Just now ... I'll be home later ... Bye." Then, feverishly, she dialed Tony's.
    "No, Joyce. He was here for a while, but said he was going out. He left just this minute."
    Joyce said, "Thanks," and let the receiver fall on the hook. He hadn't waited, hadn't wanted her enough to wait for her to call him back. She couldn't hold anyone. Not her parents, who didn't care enough about her to stay with her or take her along with them. Not Tony. Not anyone. Everything was such a mess. Anybody had to be important to somebody. Anybody was worth something.
    She opened the door of the booth, feeling the tears welling up in her eyes, and tense agony in her knees and stomach. She had counted so much on Tony's love, on giving herself as the means for assuring love.
    She realized, then, that she hadn't eaten since morning. Getting the job on the Courier had been so exciting, and the instructions for working so wonderful, and the immediacy of obtaining the job so surprising that the idea of food had vanished entirely from her mind.
    She went to the lunch counter across from the telephone booth end ordered a sandwich and milk.
    She was trying to reconcile her vast appetite with her emotional anguish when a voice beside her said, "Joyce?"
    She swung around on her stool. "Oh, hello, Mr. Burdette. Gee, I didn't expect to see any more of you today."
    Burdette was the city editor of the Courier. He was young--thirty-one--for the job, since most of the men over whom he held dominion were his seniors. But the staff was a homegrown product Burdette had been lured from the hustle and bustle of a huge Manhattan daily by an advertisement in Printer's Ink that promised "fine future and rapid advancement to the right man." Moreover the canyons of concrete and the dying lawns of Central Park had never satisfied an earthy passion within him that cried out for greenery and small homes and suburbia.
    He had brought with him to Paugwasset his wife, a small son, a passion for jazz amounting to a religion (which he kept reverently concealed from Vail Erwin, his managing editor and immediate supervisor, who believed there should be no religions before the First Church of Christ Scientist). He had also brought an automobile which would have been legally outlawed fifty miles to the west where Jersey state laws protect the citizens from mayhem on the highway and, finally, he also brought the cult of the weed--marijuana.
    He was conscious of no wrongdoing in indulging himself in a smoke now and then, though in Paugwasset he kept its use secret from everyone but Janice, his understanding wife. She knew that it was an almost inescapable part of his background, a product of formative years spent largely in the company of musicians, entertainers and others who took "tea" smoking as much for granted as others take tobacco smoking. She knew also that Frank took pride in the fact that he could take the stuff or leave it alone, deliberately resorting to it on occasion for the pleasure it gave him, rather than smoking it willy-nilly by virtue of habit or addiction.
    Certainly it did not interfere with Frank's home or his life. But sometimes, as now, he found himself lonely for the highways and byways of New York. As he often pointed out to Janice, whom he had married some years ago in a sudden fit of domesticity, suburbia was fine for commuters who could leave it every morning and return every evening, but it was damned dull if you had to stay there all day long. His heart was in Harlem, and Jimmy Ryan's, and Nick's, and Eddie Condon's. His heart was on Fifty-second Street where small bands and trios and quintets were writing history in marijuana smoke and music. His heart was in these places--and Janice at the moment was away for a week before going