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herself.
    “You know Kathy,” said Mark quietly, bending toward Alice. “You shouldn’t take her seriously. You’re her only sister; she loves you, you know, Allie.”
    “Oh, of course,” said Alice, with increasing discomfort. “I’ll drop in soon, Mark.” But she had no such intention. It would take a long time before her wounds would be healed.
    “I insisted on sending Angelo to nursery school last September,” said Mark. “And I’m insisting on calling him by his middle name—Bruce.”
    “Oh, that’s wonderful about the nursery school,” said Alice. She paused. “But Angelo is a beautiful name. Why Bruce?”
    Mark sipped his coffee. “The kids laughed at him in school. They called him Angel Saint. Kids can be very cruel, you know. Angel Saint! I suppose that’s what Kathy had in mind when she named him. But listen to how it sounds, for a boy!”
    Alice smiled. “Well, it does sound a little fanciful and precious. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry. Yes, ‘Bruce’ is better. How does Kathy like that?”
    “She still calls him Angel, at home.” Mark grinned. “I’m hoping she’ll get over it, as he grows older.”
    “And–Bruce? How does he like to be called Bruce?”
    Mark did not look at her. “He doesn’t. But that doesn’t matter. That’s his name from here on. A. Bruce Saint.”
    “Does he like the nursery school?”
    Mark was silent so long, and his expression was so remote and brooding that Alice thought he had not heard her. And then he said, flatly, “He isn’t at the school any longer.”
    “Oh.” Alice waited. She saw dark trouble on Mark’s face, and she wanted to put out her hand and place it over the thin clever hand near hers. Dear Mark! Dearest Mark!
    Mark shrugged. “He hated the nursery school. Even after four weeks of it he still screamed madly every morning, at home, and made terrible scenes. With Kathy. And she cried all over him. Anyone would have thought they were being separated forever, with all the emotion and rage and grief, and the tearing at each other. But he settled down quietly enough in the car, when I finally got him in there, and he was all smiles alone with me. It was like shutting off a hydrant, the minute we were alone.” Mark shrugged again. “Well. He is only five, you know. But younger kids than he were in the school. And in September he’ll have to go to kindergarten. There’ll be more scenes, of course. Kathy’s already crying about it, and Bruce is already screaming at the prospect.”
    “Why did you let Kathy take him out of the nursery school?” asked Alice.
    Mark said, with no emphasis in his tones, “She didn’t. He was expelled. The teachers said he was incorrigible. That’s a ten-dollar word for spoiled. The teachers told me he disrupted the school, fought with the children, and—” He stopped, abruptly.
    “I’m sorry,” said Alice, her heart sinking.
    “Oh, it’ll be all right, one of these days. After all, Kathy can’t hold back the clock; Bruce will grow up. She says the teachers didn’t ‘understand’ Bruce, that he was just more intelligent than the other children. I think she has a point there; the kid is really exceptionally bright.”
    “Yes,” said Alice, with honesty. “He really is, Mark. You remember he walked before he was eleven months old, and was talking before that. Even when he was a young baby he was unusually alert and alive, and full of charm. He could do things at six months that other children can’t do at one.”
    Mark’s face cleared a little, but only a little. Alice was thinking of the years she had lived in the Saints’ house, and especially of the years after Angelo’s birth. She had been only fourteen when the boy had been born. Those four years which followed had been filled with misery, distress, anxiety and pain for Alice. When Angelo, or Bruce, had been only a year old she had detected an eerie look of malicious hatred in his beautiful eyes when he stared at her. She