I got up and drew a chair for her, the one opposite me, and she sat down on the forward quarter of it, keeping her spine easily and beautifully straight.

I went back -- almost hurried back -- to my own chair, more than willing to hold up my end of a conversation. When I was seated, I couldn't think of anything to say, though.

I smiled again, still keeping my coal-black filling under concealment. I remarked that it was certainly a terrible day out.

"Yes; quite," said my guest, in the clear, unmistakable voice of a small-talk detester.

She placed her fingers flat on the table edge, like someone at a seance, then, almost instantly, closed her hands -- her nails were bitten down to the quick.

She was wearing a wristwatch, a military-looking one that looked rather like a navigator's chronograph. Its face was much too large for her slender wrist.

"You were at choir practice," she said matter-of-factly. "I saw you." I said I certainly had been, and that I had heard her voice singing separately from the others. I said I thought she had a very fine voice.

She nodded. "I know. I'm going to be a professional singer." "Really? Opera?" "Heavens, no. I'm going to sing jazz on the radio and make heaps of money. Then, when I'm thirty, I shall retire and live on a ranch in Ohio." She touched the top of her soaking-wet head with the flat of her hand. "Do you know Ohio?" she asked.

I said I'd been through it on the train a few times but that I didn't really know it. I offered her a piece of cinnamon toast.

"No, thank you," she said. "I eat like a bird, actually." I bit into a piece of toast myself, and commented that there's some mighty rough country around Ohio.