Mr. Rodriguez’s voice halted, wandered on. Swoboda sat still. Soon he would rise and go. Was there not the Christmas party to attend, and had he not promised Abdul Karim of Fellowships to help him serve the drinks? There was nothing to stay for here, nothing more to be said, even though Mr. Rodriguez was still talking, for Swoboda had now surrendered to the familiar feelings that had assailed him in the past few moments. He had fought against them, but to no avail. Try as he would, Swoboda could not change; he could not help himself. There was nothing to be done about it. The fact was that he pitied Mr. Patricio Rodriguez-O’Hearn. He pitied him with all his heart.

It was nothing short of tragic.

THE STORY OF MISS SADIE GRAINE

The moment his new secretary was introduced to him, Pylos knew it would not do. He looked at Miss Sadie Graine and, even as he smiled and shook her hand, he knew that it would not do. It was his first day at the Organization and, although his appointment was a lofty one, he did not wish to begin with a complaint. But the next day, or the following one at latest, he would ask for a different secretary.

Miss Sadie Graine was a tiny woman. She was barely five feet tall. Her features and bones were birdlike, her head tightly feathered in gray. She was an angular little creature, sharp of nose, eye, and tongue; but her lips were her most singular characteristic, being in repose (though that is not the word) no more than a small straight line. People meeting Miss Graine for the first time were apt to exclaim afterward, “But the mouth. My God, the mouth.”

It had not always been so. There existed, in fact, a childhood photograph from which a tiny Sadie gazed forth with eyes large and luminous. These eyes—from taking in less and less, from peering ever harder into ever narrowing interstices—had contracted to their present dimensions. It is not the purpose here to study the causes for shrinkage. (Causes there were, for Sadie Graine’s story was, like everybody’s, a tale of truth and consequences.) Miss Graine’s tale will rather be told in the form—the outmoded and discredited form—of her effect on others.