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By Root 8748 0

of bottles of mineral water and a fiasco of chianti back to the compart-ment, and offered Mr. Barrow and the girl drinks when they came back from the customs and the police looking very cross and sleepy. The girl said she couldn't drink wine because she'd signed a pledge not to drink or smoke when she joined the N.E.R., but she drank some mineral water and complained that it tickled her nose. Then they al huddled back into their corners to try to sleep some more. By the time they pul ed into the Termi station in Rome they were al cal ing each other by their first names. The Texas girl's name was Anne Elizabeth. She and Dick had spent the day standing in the corridor looking out at the saffronroofed towns and the peasants' houses each with a blue smear on the stucco behind the grapevine over the door, and the olives and the twisted shapes of the vines in their redterraced fields; the pale hil y Italian landscape where the pointed cypresses stood up so dark they were like gashes in a canvas. She'd told him al about trying to get overseas al through the war and how her brother had been kil ed learning to fly at San Antonio, and how nice Mr. Barrow had been on the boat and in Paris but that he would try to make love to her and acted so sil y, which was very inconvenient; Dick said wel maybe it wasn't so sil y. He could see that Anne Elizabeth felt fine about travel ing to Rome with a real army officer who'd been to the front and could talk Italian and everything. From the station he had to rush to the embassy with his despatch cases, but he had time to arrange to cal up Miss Trent at the Near East Relief. Barrow too shook hands with him warmly and said he hoped they'd see

something of each other; he was anxious to establish con-tacts with people who real y knew what it was al about. The only thing Dick thought of that night was to get

-365-through and get to bed. Next morning he cal ed up Ed Schuyler at the Red Cross. They ate a big winey lunch together at an expensive restaurant near the Pincio gardens. Ed had been leading the life of Riley; he had an apart-ment on the Spanish Stairs and took a lot of trips. He'd gotten fat. But now he was in trouble. The husband of an Italian woman he'd been running round with was threaten-ing to chal enge him to a duel and he was afraid there'd be a row and he'd lose his job with the Red Cross. "The war was al right but it's the peace that real y gets you," he said. Anyway he was sick of Italy and the Red Cross and wanted to go home. The only thing was that they were going to have a revolution in Italy and he'd like to stay and see it. "Wel , Dick, for a member of the grenadine guards you seem to have done pretty wel for yourself."

"Al a series of accidents," said Dick, wrinkling up his nose. "Things are funny, do you know it?""Don't I know it . . . I wonder what happened to poor old Steve? Fred Summers was joining the Polish Legion, last I heard of him."" Steve's probably in jail," said Dick,

"where we ought to be.""But it's not every day you get a chance to see a show like this." It was four o'clock when they left the restaurant. They went to Ed's room and sat drinking cognac in his window looking out over the yel ow and verdigris roofs of the city and the baroque domes sparkling in the last sunlight, re-membering how tremendously they'd felt Rome the last time they'd been there together, talking about what they'd be doing now that the war was over. Ed Schuyler said he wanted to get a foreign correspondent job that would take him out east; he couldn't imagine going back home to up-state New York; he had to see Persia and Afghanistan. Talking about what he was going to do made Dick feel hel ishly miserable. He started walking back and forth across the tiled floor. The bel rang and Schuyler went out in the hal . Dick

-366-heard whispering and a woman's voice talking Italian in a thin treble. After a moment Ed pushed a little long. nosed woman with huge black eyes into the room. "This is Magda," he said, " Signora Sculpi, meet Captain Savage." After that they had to talk in mixed French