The giant spoke in a deep, bass, rumbling voice that shook me to my boots.

A night in April. We are dressing for a dinner party, I in a black skirt with a porthole over which I have dropped an empire-waisted blue schmatte. Schmatte, along with merch for merchandise and matchy-matchy, as in That sweater and skirt are too matchy-matchy, is among the words I have picked up at Mlle.

We will ornament the windows with trim to make the room seem brighter.

To cap it all I had written a letter to Mara saying that we had to find a way out soon or I would commit suicide. It must have been a maudlin letter because when she telephoned me she said it was imperative to see me immediately.