' 'Tis a lovely evening,' he said in a rich Irish brogue. His small blue eyes were blank.

'Fine,' I echoed, giving Alice my arm. 'I'll pick the car up after dinner.'

He didn't bat an eye. Beckoning to his assistant, a tall, sallow-faced youth in the same kind of uniform, he said, 'Park the gentleman's car,' then walked with us to the glass door and held it open. That went off all right.

But when we mounted the red-carpeted stairs and stepped into the full view of the lobby we brought on a yellow alert. The place was filled with solid white America: rich-looking, elderly couples, probably retired; the still active executive type in their forties and fifties, faces too red and hair too thin, clad in expensive suits which didn't hide their paunches, mostly with wives who refused to give up; and the younger folks no more than half of whom were in uniform, with their brittle young women with rouge-scarred mouths and hard, hunting eyes. There was a group of elderly Army officers, a brigadier-general, two colonels, and a major; and apart from them a group of young naval officers looking very white-ensigns perhaps. I didn't see but one Jew I recognized as a Jew, and nobody of any other race at all. And I only noticed a few couples in evening dress.

It seemed that to a person everyone froze. It started at the front where we were first noticed, and ran the length and breadth of the room, including the room clerks, the porters, the bellmen, the people behind desks. Many were caught in awkward positions, some in the middle of a gesture, some with their mouths half open. Then suddenly there was a concerted effort to ignore us and only a few continued to stare.

'The great white world,' I said flippantly, leaning slightly toward Alice as we walked the gauntlet of the room. 'Strictly D-Day. Now I know how a fly feels in a glass of buttermilk.'