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on my best behavior. Sober and sedate." She made a long face, and steepled her hands against her stomach, in mimicry of a bluenosed clergyman.
                    "Oh, on account of meeting your in-laws," Helen remembered.
                    "Hugh says they're not like that at all; I have absolutely nothing to worry about. But of course he just may be slightly prejudiced in their favor. I wouldn't think much of him if he wasn't."
                    She was scouring a mystic white circle on each cheek, and then spreading them around, mouth open the whole while, though it played no part in the rite itself.
                    "Go ahead, help yourself," she invited. "Stick your finger in and dig out a gob. I'm not sure what it does for you, but it smells nice, so there's nothing to lose."
                    "Is that really true, what you told me?" Helen said, following suit. "That they've never even seen you until now? I can't believe it"
                    "Cross my heart and hope to die, they've never laid eyes on me in their lives. I met Hugh on the Other Side, like I told you this afternoon, and we were married over there, and we went on living over there until just now. My folks were dead, and I was on a scholarship, studying music, and he had a job with one of these government agencies; you know, one of these initialed outfits. They don't even know what I look like!"
                    "Didn't you even send them a picture of yourself? Not even after you were married?"
                    "We never even had a wedding-picture taken; you know how us kids are nowadays. Biff, bing, bang! and we're married. I started to send them one of myself several times, but I was never quite satisfied with the ones I had. Self-conscious, you know; I wanted to make such a good first impression. One time Hugh even arranged a sitting for me at a photographer, and when I saw the proofs I said, 'Over my dead body you'll send these!' Those French photographers! I knew I was going to meet them eventually, and snapshots are so-- so--Anyway the ones I take. So finally I said to him, 'I've waited this long, I'm not going to send any to them at all now. I'll save it up for a surprise, let them see me in the flesh instead, when they finally do. That way, they won't build up any false hopes and then be disappointed.' I used to censor all his letters too, wouldn't let him describe me. You can imagine how he would have done it. 'Mona Lisa,' Venus on the half-shell. I'd say, 'No you don't!' when I'd catch him at it, and scratch it out We'd have more tussles that way, chase each other around the room, trying to get the letter back or trying to get it away from me."
                    She became serious for a moment. Or at least, approached as closely to it as she seemed capable of.
                    "Y'know, now I wish I hadn't done that, sort of. Played hide and seek with them like this, I mean. Now I have got cold feet. Do you think they'll really like me? Suppose they don't? Suppose they have me built up in their expectations as someone entirely different, and--"
                    Like the little boy in the radio skit who prattles about a selfinvented bugaboo until he ends up by frightening himself with it.
                    "How on earth do you make the water stay in this thing?" she interrupted herself. She pounded lightly on the plunger set into the washbasin. "Every time I get it to fill, it runs right out again."
                    "Twist it a little, and then push down on it, I think."
                    Patrice stripped off her wedding-band before plunging her hands in. "Hold this for me, I want to wash my hands. I have a horror of losing it It slipped down a drain on the Other Side, once, and they had to take out a whole section of pipe before they could get it out for