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be ready
à sept heures précises?”
    He certainly could.
    She invited “Percy,” as she declared she would call him from now on, since he detested “Hugh,” to come with her for a bit of summer skiing at Drakonita, or Darkened Heat, as he misheard it, which caused him to conjure up a dense forest protecting romantic ramblers from the blue blaze of an alpine noon. He said he had never learned to ski on a holiday at Sugarwood, Vermont, but would be happy to stroll beside her, along a footpath not only provided for him by fancy but also swept clean with a snowman’s broom—one of those instant unverified visions which can fool the cleverest man.

13
    Now we have to bring into focus the main street of Witt as it was on Thursday, the day after her telephone call. It teems with transparent people and processes, into which and through which we might sink with an angel’s or author’s delight, but we have to single out for this report only one Person. Not an extensive hiker, he limited his loafing to a tedious survey of the village. A grim stream of cars rolled and rolled, some seeking with the unwieldy wariness of reluctant machinery a place to park, others coming from, or heading for, the much more fashionable resort of Thur, twenty miles north. He passed several times by the old fountain dribbling through the geranium-lined trough of a hollowed log; he examined the post office and the bank, the church and the tourist agency, and a famous black hovel that was still allowed to survive with its cabbage patch and scarecrow crucifix between a boarding-house and a laundry.
    He drank beer in two different taverns. He lingered before a sports shop; relingered—and bought a nice gray turtleneck sweater with a tiny and very pretty American flag embroidered over the heart. “Made in Turkey,” whispered its label.
    He decided it was time for some more refreshments—and saw her sitting at a sidewalk café. You swerved toward her, thinking she was alone; then noticed, too late, a second handbag on the opposite chair. Simultaneously her companion came out of the tea shop and, resuming her seat, said in that lovely New York voice, with that harlot dash he would have recognized even in heaven: “The john is a joke.”
    Meanwhile Hugh Person, unable to shed the mask of an affable grin, had come up and was invited to join them.
    An adjacent customer, comically resembling Person’s late Aunt Melissa whom we like very much, was reading l’
Erald Tribune
. Armande believed (in the vulgar connotation of the word) that Julia Moore had met Percy. Julia believed she had. So did Hugh, indeed, yes. Did his aunt’s double permit him to borrow her spare chair? He was welcome to it. She was a dear soul, with five cats, living in a toy house, at the end of a birch avenue, in the quietest part of——
    Interrupting us with an earsplitting crash an impassive waitress, a poor woman in her own right, dropped a tray with lemonades and cakes, and crouched, splitting into many small quick gestures peculiar to that woman, her face impassive.
    Armande informed Percy that Julia had come all the way from Geneva to consult her about the translation of a number of phrases with which she, Julia, who was going tomorrow to Moscow, desired to “impress” her Russian friends. Percy, here, worked for her stepfather.
    “My
former
stepfather, thank Heavens,” said Julia. “By the way, Percy, if that’s your
nom de voyage
, perhaps you may help. As she explained, I want to dazzle some people in Moscow, who promised me the company of a famous young Russian poet. Armande has supplied me with a number of darling words, but we got stuck at—” (taking a slip of paper from her bag)—“I want to know how to say:‘What a cute little church, what a big snowdrift.’ You see we do it first into French and she thinks ‘snowdrift’ is
rafale de neige
, but I’m sure it can’t be
rafale
in French and
rafalovich
in Russian, or whatever they call a