TWENTY-EIGHT.

    When I had finished I softly laid my hand upon his shoulder. Jonathon smiled to see me so perturbed.

    "I'm serious," I said. "I saw a woman standing there, staring at me deliberately. It's alarming."

    "It's certainly odd," he said, taking my free hand and caressing it. "But I fancy that you're completely safe from crazy women and other predators. It isn't as if she even said anything distinctly threatening."

    "Well, I couldn't hear what she said," I replied, withdrawing my hand from his grasp and settling it in my lap. "It could have been totally sinister. It could have been a warning. Now I'll never know. Unless I see her again, which I don't particularly care to do, either."

    "Mysterious circumstances," Jonathon murmured.

    "I wash my hands of such wretched ghosts. Here is the truth: I think I've begun to love you, a little."

    Jonathon smiled. "Only a little?"

    "A little is more than enough. I wouldn't be so irritated and angry all of the time if I wasn't."

    "Your frankness is beyond reproach."

    I sighed. "Doubtless it doesn't interest you."

    "It is important that I am genuine and contemporaneous," he replied. "I'm just not sure yet."

    "Certainly you are," I said. "With this preface, let us enter into the thick of it."

    "That can easily be done."

    I felt his burning breath on my neck. His eyelids closed were as two blue flowers.

    "You're a charming girl," he murmured, and he put his hand over my hand and squeezed it lightly, damply, and I suggested that we could have drinks once in awhile. In a formal, cyclic way.

    "You're a sly one," he replied. "We're having drinks now," indicating his scotch and my amaretto sour. "We might even have dinner."

    "Dinner," I exclaimed. "That's timely, now that we're having after-dinner drinks." I rolled my eyes. It was past midnight.

    "Well, another night, I intended to say," he said hastily, smiling up at me. "I have reservations at the Magic Castle for Friday. I hope you won't mind coming."

TO BE CONTINUED