"Secondly," said Lapointe, "we're going to send out an all points bulletin . . . that's an APE . . ."

Walgreen was out of Lapointe's office before the sentence was finished. No help there, he thought.

7

At home he told his wife he was going to Washington. Mildred was at her small Shim-oo pottery wheel. She was centering a reddish mound of clay and the spring heat had given her skin a healthy flush.

"You've never looked so beautiful, dear."

"Oh, c'mon. I'm a mess," she said. But she laughed.

"There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think more and more how right I was to marry you. How lucky I was."

And she smiled again and in that smile there was so much life that the great death he knew he was facing, made no less great by its commonness to all men, was, in that smile of life, made less fearful for a moment.

"I married a beautiful person too, Ernie."

"Not as beautiful as I did."

"I think so, dear. I think so."

"You know," he said, trying to be casual but not so casual that Mildred would see the effort and suspect something, "I can finish up a Washington project in three weeks, if . .."

"If I got away on a trip," she said.

"Yes," said Walgreen. "Maybe to your brother's in New Hampshire."

"I was thinking of Japan."

"Maybe we'll both go, but after your brother's."

She left without finishing the pot. It would be two days before he found she had spoken with his secretary and knew how seriously he had taken that telephone threat. He would realize later she knew why she was being sent away and did not let on so he would not carry the extra burden of worry. When he did realize it would be too late.