I am smitten, Catherine said silently as she gave her hair a hasty brushing in the bedroom. How long has it been since I was smitten?

She remembered as she touched up her makeup.

She had overheard the young man through her dorm window. He had been talking to a fraternity brother after he had deposited Catherine at the door.

“How was your date with Sphinx?” the fraternity brother had asked idly.

“Like dating Snow White. You never know if she’s going to say anything, or if she does, what it’s going to be; and you feel like she might have the Seven Dwarves in her pocket.”

He had never asked her out again; and Catherine had been too unnerved and hurt to accept a date for a long time after that.

But I’m not scared now, she realized as she dashed into the bathroom (wouldn’t do to have to go at the levee).

She wondered, as she flushed the toilet, if Randall was so tempting because she had been so lonely for so long; because Leona’s solitary life and death had forced her to wonder if she would be alone forever.

“I don’t care,” she said out loud, zipping up her blue jeans.

She decided, peering in the mirror again, that she looked positively animated. The sun yesterday had taken care of her need for color. “Though I wish,” she muttered, “it had skipped my nose in the process.”

What the hell, she thought, stuffing her keys in one pocket and her cigarette case in the other. What the hell.

She had not been prepared to be so relaxed with him. She had heard talk of Randall all her life: her mother had been fond of his mother, though Angel Gerrard was considerably older. The two women, sitting companionably in the kitchen over coffee, had discussed their children; and Catherine, in and out, had heard (without caring a great deal, since he was so much older) of Randall’s progress through college, graduate school, and employment with a congressman who was a Gerrard family friend.