–-I’m still working here, but I begin to get an idea I’m not going to be first vice-president.

* * * * *

Of course it got out. Though slowly.

Of course every one present at the Federal Club’s Scandal in High Life had promised to keep silence; and of course every one of them confided in someone else. In New Year’s week there was nothing in print, but Radio Station KICH, the property of the highly disaffected Mr. Harold W. Whittick, on its chatty Home News Hour promised that within a few days it would be able to give to its far-flung audience—the KICH staff were among the most horrible far-flungers in the country—the details of a shameful incident which had revealed that a well-known financier in the North Middlewest had been leading a shocking double life.

Neil and Vestal listened and looked at each other and were scared.

The day before New Year’s, Judd Browler telephoned, “Look, old man, I’m in kind of an embarrassing position. My wife and my dad are simply raising Cain about my wanting to publicly stand back of you for—you know. So I guess you better not come here for dinner tomorrow evening. Might be uncomfortable for you. But privately, I agree with you. I’ll call you for lunch, this week.”

Judd did not call again.

* * * * *

They had planned gaily to go to the big New Year’s Eve Party at the Heather Country Club. They stayed home and were reasonably bleak. Neil worried, “I don’t think I could lose my job, could I? What would we do, if I did?”

“I don’t know. We’ve always been so sort of sure of a decent living. You don’t suppose Papa Morton, the old clubman, would cut off my pocket-money, do you?”

“Oh, what if he does! We’ll get along somehow.” It did not sound like a bugle-call of courage.

“I suppose,” she speculated, startled by the revolutionary observation, “that there’s quite a proportion of American families that, every New Year’s Eve, worry about whether their jobs will hold up through the coming year.”

“Yes, I doubt if my friend John Woolcape, the janitor, is spending this New Year’s Eve wondering whether he’ll switch his investments from General Motors to real estate.”

“Oh, don’t be so damned smug! You and your crusading friends! I don’t see that it took any special virtue in you to get yourself born colored. Can’t you forget it, while you’re with me? I’m trying hard enough to!”

“You’re right. I’ll probably become as self-righteous as Corinne Brewster.”

“And just who may Miss Corinne be? I don’t know any of these new people you seem to have been seeing. Neil, you’re drifting pretty far away from me. I say!” Her wistfulness turned to sharpness. “Was she that extremely good-looking colored woman that sneaked in here to see you, one evening?”

“No, that was another girl. I’m very popular. Are you paying me the compliment of being jealous, puss?”