“That’s right, love,” the voice said. “Scorpio I was. And we met Douglas Pugh on the Prom and he said, ‘You look like a queen today, Katinka,’ he said. ‘You look like a queen, Katinka,’ he said. Why are those two boys looking in at the window?”

We ran up the gravel drive, and around the corner of the house, and into the avenue and out onto St. Augustus Crescent. The rain roared down to drown the town. There we stopped for breath. We did not speak or look at each other. Then we walked on through the rain. At Victoria corner, we stopped again.

“Good-night, old man,” Leslie said.

“Good-night,” I said.

And we went our different ways.

Other Titles

FROM NEW DIRECTIONS

Adventures in the Skin Trade
and Other Stories

A Child’s Christmas in Wales,
illustrated by Ellen Raskin

Collected Stories

The Doctor and the Devils
and Other Scripts

Eight Stories,
a New Directions Bibelot

On the Air with Dylan Thomas,
The Broadcasts

The Poems of Dylan Thomas

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog

Quite Early One Morning

Rebecca’s Daughters
and Other Film Scripts

Selected Poems 1934-1952

Under Milk Wood, a Play for Voices

Copyright

Copyright 1955 by New Directions
Copyright 1938, 1939, 1946 by New Directions
Copyright 1952, 1953 by Dylan Thomas
Copyright © 1964 by New Directions
Introduction Copyright © 1960 by Vernon Watkins

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

First published as ND Paperbook No. 183 in 1964

Reset edition, 1969

The publisher is grateful to the following for aid in collecting some of the stories in this second posthumous collection of Dylan Thomas’s prose, first published by New Directions in 1955: Mr. David Higham, for many years the author’s agent and since his death one of the three Trustees of his estate; Mr. Daniel Jones of Swansea, Wales; Mr. Constantine FitzGibbon; and Mr. Donald M. Allen.

The new version of “The True Story,” published here for the first time at least in the United States, is believed to have been preferred by the author.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 55-7367
ISBN 978-0-811-20202-2

ISBN 978-0-811-22379-9 (e-book)

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation,
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011