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Tuesday. Wednesday is our anniversary …”
    “Our anniversary?”
    “Thelma’s! Our twentieth. I want to take her to … Tell me the best restaurant around now?”
    “What does it matter? It’s very small and very smart and the owner would never give you a table.”
    His lack of humor asserted itself: “That’s a damn strange thing to say. What do you mean, he wouldn’t give me a table?”
    “Just what I said. One look at you and he’d know you had hairy heels. There are some people who won’t serve people with hairy heels. He’s one of them.”
    Dr. Bentsen was familiar with her habit of introducing unfamiliar lingo, and he had learned to pretend he knew what it signified; he was as ignorant of her ambience as she was of his, but the shifting instability of his character would not allow him to admit it.
    “Well, then,” he said, “is Friday all right? Around five?”
    She said: “No, thank you.” He was tying his tie and stopped; she was still lying on the bed, uncovered, naked; Fred was singing “By Myself.” “No, thank you, darling Dr. B. I don’t think we’ll be meeting here any more.”
    She could see he was startled. Of course he would miss her—she was beautiful, she was considerate, it never bothered her when he asked her for money. He knelt beside the bed andfondled her breast. She noticed an icy mustache of sweat on his upper lip. “What is this? Drugs? Drink?”
    She laughed and said: “All I drink is white wine, and not much of that. No, my friend. It’s simply that you have hairy heels.”
    Like many analysts, Dr. Bentsen was quite literal-minded; just for a second she thought he was going to strip off his socks and examine his feet. Churlishly, like a child, he said: “I don’t have hairy heels.”
    “Oh, yes you do. Just like a horse. All ordinary horses have hairy heels. Thoroughbreds don’t. The heels of a well-bred horse are flat and glistening. Give my love to Thelma.”
    “Smart-ass. Friday?”
    The Astaire record ended. She swallowed the last of the wine.
    “Maybe. I’ll call you,” she said.
    As it happened, she never called, and she never saw him again—except once, a year later, when she sat on a banquette next to him at La Grenouille; he was lunching with Mary Rhinelander, and she was amused to see that Mrs. Rhinelander signed the check.
    THE PROMISED SNOW HAD ARRIVED by the time she returned, again on foot, to the house on Beekman Place. The front door was painted pale yellow and had a brass knocker shaped like a lion’s claw. Anna, one of four Irishwomen who staffed the house, answered the door and reported that the children, exhausted from an afternoon of ice-skating at Rockefeller Center, had already had their supper and been put to bed.
    Thank God. Now she wouldn’t have to undergo the half-hour of playtime and tale-telling and kiss-goodnight that customarily concluded her children’s day; she may not have beenan affectionate mother, but she was a dutiful one—just as her own mother had been. It was seven o’clock, and her husband had phoned to say he would be home at seven-thirty; at eight they were supposed to go to a dinner party with the Sylvester Hales, friends from San Francisco. She bathed, scented herself to remove memories of Dr. Bentsen, remodeled her makeup, of which she wore the most modest quantity, and changed into a grey silk caftan and grey silk slippers with pearl buckles.
    She was posing by the fireplace in the library on the second floor when she heard her husband’s footsteps on the stairs. It was a graceful pose, inviting as the room itself, an unusual octagonal room with cinnamon lacquered walls, a yellow lacquered floor, brass bookshelves (a notion borrowed from Billy Baldwin), two huge bushes of brown orchids ensconced in yellow Chinese vases, a Marino Marini horse standing in a corner, a South Seas Gauguin over the mantel, and a delicate fire fluttering in the fireplace. French windows offered a view of a darkened garden,