At the highway he pulled to a stop and looking left to see if any cars were coming he noticed the billboard sign. He had remembered it all through the five years since he was last here, like the washstand in the room he had, and a certain tree by the lake at which he tied his canoe. The sign was something he clearly remembered about the place – the English-type scroll of the lettering and the red and white border. And he was stilled and surprised now at the words, in smaller letters, set under ‘Riverview Hotel.’ ‘Restricted clientele,’ it said. In the ten seconds it took for him to glance up the road and at the sign he wondered whether they had had that on the sign the last time. He drove onto the highway dunking about it. It couldn’t have been on there before … and yet somehow he knew that it had been there. But in those days it simply meant that anybody was welcome who was nice, and wasn’t loud. It meant there would be your kind of people there, not that they would absolutely refuse a room to a person if he looked a little … Strangely, as he drove on slowly, he saw himself standing in front of that Mr Stevens of the Akron Corporation. And for a moment he felt hot with anger again that they should lie to his very face that way, as though they could tell by glancing at him that he was loud and unmannerly and a low person, and his hands hardened on the wheel and he said, aloud hut in a whisper, ‘The idea!’

‘You’d think he’d at least of thought up a good excuse. Crowded! I wanted to choke him, I wanted to choke him, I swear I would have choked him!’ she cursed, gritting her teeth.

‘Don’t … don’t take it to heart, dear,’ he pleaded, feeling his own failure to come off with dignity. ‘Please, try to forget about it.’

‘Why don’t they do something about it?’ She was on edge and he speeded up as though to ward off her imminent explosion into tears.’ Why don’t they take everybody and find out who’s who and put the damned kikes off to themselves and settle it once and for all!’ She breathed in a quick sob.

‘Now, dear …’ he said helplessly.

‘I can’t stand it, I can’t stand any more. You can’t go out of the house any more without something happening. Go to another place, Lu. Where are you going? Go to another place,’ she demanded, as though she would grab the wheel momentarily.

‘We’re going home,’ he said.

‘I want to go to another place. You hear me? I want to go to another place!’ she shouted.

‘Now stop that!’

‘No, let me out, I’m not going home! Stop the car!’

‘Let go of my arm. Now let go!’ He flung one arm out and she let go of it.