"STRATEGY" budd johnson TWENTY-TWO (Continued from page 8) worry; I'm giving you the house and making a settlement that will take care of all you need very well." "Jack, you can't be serious about this. People like you and I don't break up. The chauffeur and the cook might, or any common people without background or culture, but not people like us. We can't afford to. We have our standing to consider." He watched her coming across the room. She was talking to him as if he were a child who'd been naughty and was in danger of going to bed without supper. She held out her hand to him as she came. Her white, well-manicured hand that would he on his arm in a moment as it had on the others the night before. She was going to allow him to have the touch of her hand as a reward for her being sensible, and not leaving her to the newspapers that would throw mud on her "standing." "There's no use talking, Helen. I told you when we married that the one thing I won't even try to fight is indifference. No man can fight that." She spoke now as if she realized that he had made up his mind. She would have to sacrifice. "You must still love me. We've been so happy since we were married." He scarcely realized she'd kissed him, although his lips burned with her touch. How well he knew this woman. There would be another promise. "We won't go to the banquet if you don't want to. It's been so long since we spent an evening together alone. I'll go change into something more comfortable, then you come and we'll talk." There it was. Even her room was open to him. That locked door that he had so loathed inwardly. Tonight it would be wide, an invitation. Tomorrow? His strong, white hands were shaking slightly. He put them into his pockets hoping she wouldn't notice. Perhaps he was wrong; they might still get along together. Helen was a very lovely person, really, it was just that she'd been a little trying. She still loved him, he thought, and that was the main thing. Yet if he went upstairs now, he would never try to leave again. She'd see to that. Still, that was what he had been trying for, some way of killing her indifference. It might all change. He walked out into the hall and stood looking at the narrow stairs leading up to his room which he had just deserted. Near that room there was another room with the door discreetly open. The still, staid butler approached and coughed apologetically. "What is it, Revers?" "I'm sorry to disturb you sir, but do you know how many people the mistress is expecting for dinner tomorrow night? I believe she forgot to mention." "When did she tell you we were having guests tomorrow?" There was a world of loneliness in the man's voice, and his hands didn't tremble any longer. "Why just now, sir. Just as she went upstairs. She gave me a number to call and told me to inform the hostess she wouldn't be able to attend tonight, but to invite the guests present over here tomorrow night." His wife was at the other end of the table talking gaily to the man next to her, and her white, well-manicured hand lay on the man's arm as she spoke. "Revers." "Yes, sir?" "When you go upstairs, close my wife's door." The Pantheist.. stanley johnson To Christian gods I do not pray, To idols impotent as clay; But rather find Divinity In one lone lark or one mad sea; In storms that gut my lovely earth, And wailing winds' bleak frenzied mirth; In tantalizing drip of rain, Bare limbs revived where snow has lain. For abstract tenets live and die, And men themselves will deify; But beauty lives eternally In one grey dawn or one dark sea; In mists and stars and kingly trees; In silent rains and things like these. staff... Reed Coray editor Winslow Gardner Louise de Wit Arlene Andrew Bill Shipley Dan Bailey sophomore associates Walt Prothero artist Budd Johnson photographer Kent Baggs circulation manager Barbara Arnold Bernice McEntire secretaries David R. Trevithick faculty advisor TWENTY-THREE