Gene glanced at her with those eyes, daring and amused, that seemed to understand her every foolishness and desire. She didn’t CARE, resolved Sara; she would marry Gene even if they had to live in a one-room flat and she do the cooking. Oh yes; that was what she had been trying to remember: she must learn to cook.

She chucked the proofs and swam shyly toward him. She panted as he smiled at her with his especial smile of friendliness, but what he said was:

‘Sara!’

‘Yes, Gene!’

‘I, uh . . . You know these Channing Praggs — the glass manufacturer? Think you could get old lady Pragg to pull a soirée, or whatever she calls it, for me? I’ll spiel on birth control in Russia and pass the hat. Isn’t it funny, darling!’ He patted her hand, which was clenching the edge of his table-desk. ‘Nobody comes through with funds for the revolution like the wives of millionaires, even after we’ve openly announced we intend to overthrow the Democratic State and institute a real, honest-to-God dictatorship of the rednecks like me. How come? You’re a capitalist, darling. Why do you guys in the ruling class let us get away with it?’

‘I don’t think Mr. Frederick W. Cornplow is as keen on our getting away with it as I’d like to see. We’ll have to work on him a lot yet, dear.’

Their laughter was a gust that blew away all such featherbrains as Fred. She was certain that Gene was going to show a little more affection now than just the patting of hands which had been his only gesture, and she leaned over the shining blackness of his hair — as Frieda Kitz clumped into the office.

Frieda earned her living in a wall-paper warehouse; she was treasurer of the Coheeze; she never laughed except for a triumphant snort at the thought of a firing squad’s converting the Praggs and Cornplows; and though she had a tranquil broad-browed loveliness, she wore her hair tight and never dressed in anything but stiff corduroy suits and flat low shoes.

Sara looked at Frieda with hatred — she at Sara with contempt — while Gene greeted Frieda all too quietly, too understandingly, ‘Good morning, comrade.’

Sara felt that she had been sent back to the kitchen. She had been snubbed by amateur snobs like Mrs. Channing Pragg; not till now had she been snubbed by an expert like Comrade Kitz. She crept to her desk and the suddenly hateful proofs.

Gene and the Comrade did not seem to think that she was important enough to hide their secrets from her as they talked softly at his desk of orders from the great lords of communism in New York. Sara was as uncomfortable as she had felt when, at ten, she had blundered into one of her mother’s tiny coffee parties and heard those shocking bores, the Grown-up Ladies, confiding, ‘Oh, they say he drinks’, and ‘In October, she told me.’