``I've never done this before,'' she said later, when he was arranging himself to leave. Her voice shook with feeling, and he thought it lovely. He didn't doubt her truthfulness, although he had heard the words a hundred times. ``I've never done this before,'' they always said, shaking their dresses down over their white shoulders. ``I've never done this before,'' they always said, waiting for the elevator in the hotel corridor. ``I've never done this before,'' they always said, pouring another whiskey. ``I've never done this before,'' they always said, putting on their stockings. On ships at sea, on railroad trains, in summer hotels with mountain views, they always said, ``I've never done this before.''

``Where have you been?'' Mrs. Pastern asked sadly, when he came in. ``It's after eleven.''

``I had a drink with the Flannagans.''

``She told me he was in Germany.''

``He came home unexpectedly.''

Charlie ate some supper in the kitchen and went into the TV room to hear the news. ``Bomb them!'' he shouted. ``Throw a little nuclear hardware at them! Show them who's boss!'' But in bed he had trouble sleeping. He thought first of his son and daughter, away at college. He loved them. It was the only meaning of the word that he had ever known. Then he played nine imaginary holes of golf, choosing his handicap, his irons, his stance, his opponents, and his weather in detail, but the green of the links seemed faded in the light of his business worries. His money was tied up in a Nassau hotel, an Ohio pottery works, and a detergent for window-washing, and luck had been running against him. His worries harried him up out of bed, and he lighted a cigarette and went to the window. In the starlight he could see the trees stripped of their leaves. During the summer he had tried to repair some of his losses at the track, and the bare trees reminded him that his pari-mutuel tickets would still be lying, like leaves, in the gutters near Belmont and Saratoga. Maple and ash, beech and elm, one hundred to win on Three in the fourth, fifty to win on Six in the third, one hundred to win on Two in the eighth. Children walking home from school would scuff through what seemed to be his foliage. Then, getting back into bed, he thought unashamedly of Mrs. Flannagan, planning where they would next meet and what they would do. There are, he thought, so few true means of forgetfulness in this life that why should he shun the medicine even when the medicine seemed, as it did, a little crude?