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was a sullen young creature, as yet apparently untrained.
    “Eva MacClure. Oh, you don’t have to announce me – I’m not company,” said Eva. “What happened to Elsie?”
    “Oh, she must have got fired,” said the maid with a trace of animation.
    “Then you’re new here?”
    “Yes’m.” She had empty, stupid eyes. “Three weeks, it is.”
    “Heavens!” said Eva in dismay. “Is it that long? Where’s Miss Leith? In the garden?”
    “No’m. Upstairs.”
    “Then I’ll go right up.” Eva mounted the wide stairway lightly, leaving the new maid to stare after her.
    Downstairs and in the basement servants’ quarters Karen Leith’s house was as Western as the interior decorator could make it; but upstairs Karen and the East had had their way. All the bedrooms were Japanese, full of furniture and gewgaws Karen had brought back with her from her father’s house in Tokyo. It was a pity, thought Eva as she went up, that so few people had ever seen Karen’s bedrooms; for they were as quaint and absurd as specimen rooms in a museum.
    She thought she saw a kimono-clad figure going through the doorway of Karen’s sitting-room as she turned into the upstairs corridor; and Eva hurried after.
    Sure enough, it was Kinumé, Karen’s ancient maid, and Eva saw the tiny alien creature quite clearly, just going into Karen’s bedroom through the sitting-room and closing the bedroom door behind her. Eva also saw, before Kinumé disappeared, that the old woman was carrying a single blank sheet of deckle-edged Japanese stationery and an envelope, very delicate with their faint rose-on-ivory pattern of chrysanthemums.
    Eva was about to knock on Karen’s door when it opened a little and Kinumé’s tiny figure backed out, without the stationery, saying something in her sibilant speech.
    “ Oi! Damaré! ” Eva heard Karen say petulantly from inside the room.
    “ Go men nasai, okaasan ,” lisped Kinumé hastily, shutting the bedroom door and turning around.
    The old Japanese woman expressed surprise in the only way Eva had ever detected in her – by a slight widening of the ellipses of her eyes. “’Lo, Eva. You no coming see Missie long time.”
    “Hello, Kinumé,” said Eva. “No, I haven’t, and I’m terribly ashamed. How are you, and how’s Karen?”
    “Me good,” said Kinumé, but she stood her ground by the door. “Missie no good.”
    “Is Karen –” began Eva, perplexed.
    The wrinkled mouth set firmly. “You no see Missie now,” Kinumé announced in her polite, hissing little voice. “Missie liting. She finish soon.”
    Eva laughed. “I wouldn’t disturb her for the world. A major novelist! I’ll wait.”
    “I go tell Missie you here.” Kinumé turned back to the door.
    “Don’t bother. I haven’t anything to do, anyway. I’ll read a book or something.”
    Kinumé bowed and, folding her tiny hands in her sleeves, pattered off, closing the sitting-room door behind her. Eva, left to herself, took off her hat and jacket and went to the odd mirror to primp herself. She poked at her hair and wondered if she would have time to-morrow for a permanent. And her hair did need a good washing. Then she opened her bag and took out her compact and wondered while she opened the lipstick whether Dr. MacClure would bring her back one like Susie Hotchkiss’s. Mr. Hotchkiss had brought her quite the most fascinating gadget from Paris. She dabbed with her little finger three times at her lips, and then stroked the rouge on rather critically. Dick had kissed them a little out of shape and he hadn’t let her do a really good job before she left his office. The stuff wasn’t supposed to smudge, but it did. Eva made a mental note to get another lipstick like the peach-coral at home.
    And after a while she went to the window to look out at the garden, patchy in the late afternoon sun.
    The window was barred. Poor Karen! The way she had had her sitting-room and bedroom windows hemmed in iron when she bought the