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He remembered a girl who sat behind him in 1st-year Latin class, a talkative girl, the kind who was always wondering what she looked like when she was asleep--things like that. She said to him once, "Faces are interesting, you know it? I was thinking about yours the other day and do you know what I decided? I decided that if someone should ask me what your habitual expression was, I'd say, 'Animation.'" She had paused for the effect, though there was no doubting her honesty. "Even in repose your face looks animated. You always look so alive, and curious--inquisitive, I guess I mean." He had been far from embarrassed, of course. When she asked him to describe what her habitual expression was, he had made up something, he didn't know what, already lost in thought for what she had said. Animation, was it. You could hardly call that face in the mirror "animated, alive." It was set in an expression of studied disillusion which not even the new drink could shake.

He glanced at his watch. Mrs. Foley would be arriving in a quarter of an hour. Time for one more drink--two at the outside. He shoved the glass toward Sam and stared at himself over the bar again.