When Edith Leete entered the sanctum of the Leete apartment in the high-rise building in the Julian West University City that morning, Julian was sitting at the desk before the auto-teacher. The expression on his face was one of sour despair.

He was a man in his mid-thirties. Youthfully fresh of complexion, handsome in the British aristocrat tradition, hair dark and thick, touches of premature gray at the temples and a small amount in his mustache, flat of stomach, square of shoulders, medium tall. There was a certain vulnerable quality about his eyes and mouth which women had always found attractive, though he had never known that.

She said, “Bon maten, Jule.”

“Bon maten,” he muttered, not quite graciously.

“How goes the study of Interlingua?” she asked in English.

“Jupli mi legas gin. Des malpli mi komrenas gin.”

“Pri kio vi paroles? What are you saying? The more you study it the less you understand it?”

“I wish to hell you people had stuck to English, instead of dreaming up this new international language.”

She sank down in a seat and let her hands flop limply over the chair arms.