“She doesn’t wear them.” The blonde picked up one of the white porcelain elephants, looked at it, put it back in place on the counter. “I don’t know,” she said. “Something rather nice. I was thinking of a necklace or a pendant, something like that. Would you have anything along those lines?”

She moved toward the jewelry counter and began to show the necklaces and pendants. But the blonde girl wasn’t looking at them. Her eyes were on Rhoda.

“I’m at a loss,” the girl was saying. “Could you select something? You have excellent taste. I like your sweater.”

“Why, I-”

“You pick,” the girl said. “Something that would make an appropriate farewell gift. For a very close friend.”

She chose a small green heart on a gold chain. The heart was veined with red like bloodstone. “It’s not very Oriental,” she began.

“It’s lovely.” The smile again. “And quite appropriate.”

That night she saw the blonde girl a second time. First she ate dinner alone at an Italian restaurant half a block from Heaven’s Door. She walked down Sixth Avenue to see what was playing at the Waverly but it was a picture she had already seen. She wandered around, then drifted over to Washington Square. The sun had gone down and the air was cool but not uncomfortable. There was a slight breeze. She sat alone on a bench on one of the less traveled paths that wound through the park and took a paperback novel from her bag. She read a few chapters, smoked a cigarette, started reading again.

When she looked up she saw the blonde girl. She was walking down another path about twenty yards away and had not noticed Rhoda. She walked slowly, her eyes lowered, and there was an air of infinite sadness about her. She might have been a character in some movie walking down the Champs Elysee in the rain with tears staining her face. That effect. Nothing so obvious, but the air.

Rhoda almost called to her, almost went to her. The girl had been friendly, but that was nothing extraordinary-customers were often friendly, and sometimes too much so. What was it? A feeling of compatibility, perhaps. A feeling that she and the blonde girl might be able to relax together, to talk, to have a meal or a cup of coffee together.