loved, would lose caste, friends would desert him, he would forfeit his splendid independence of mind, lose his self-esteem, become in a word, a failure—because of Ken.
The Farraguts had rented a house in the suburb of Great Neck. It was called the Parsonage because Parson Chester had lived there on the knoll above the sound for the seventy-eight years from 1790 to 1868. Completely remodelled and rebuilt, the Parsonage was now a show place, a country home for the wealthy, rented at a high price to transients of the theatrical profession.
"You'll have to come," Howard told Ken. "I've set the opening for Saturday night. They'll have busses to convey the cast down for a week-end after the show. I hear the grounds are studded with bungalows and that it'll be a rich blow-out. Jackie and Alicia will pose as Duke and Duchess of the royal blood and we'll all get a little tight."
"Of course," Ken had said, "you'll be there."
Howard nodded. "I'll go."
In the hurly burly of dress rehearsals and the tensity of the opening night, the party at the Parsonage was almost forgotten. To Ken, who avoided contacts, who had made no friends with others of the cast, it promised nothing more than a boring interlude, an inescapable duty. The Farraguts might amuse him with their tedious self-importance. And Howard would be there.
Perhaps because the show was not definitely a great success when the curtain descended on the first night's performance, the mood of those who travelled to the Parsonage after midnight was varied. Skeptical members of the troupe, English actors who had crossed the ocean in the expectation that they would duplicate the show's Lon-
