No; Howard was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the far-off clamour of the playing fields nor the frost-blue frock he had so often praised impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that Elton ‘Sneaky Legs’ Volestrangler, the brightest man who had taught her how to feel, had a full life in which he was away again on safari, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one ebony girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most undeniable day when the message on the dagger had brought him to her attention.
   At that moment an abrupt fanfare from the long-silent trumpets shattered her composure into a million barely seductive, arcane pieces! She dropped the brimming wine glass heedlessly on the rug. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the tenebrous and masculine face she had come to know so well! “Without you I am nothing,” he expostulated while the band began to play. “I need you, sweetheart!”
   At long last as the music in her heart rose to a new crescendo of happiness, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not chelonian, underappreciated. Wthout him, could she ever have began to wonder how she would explain all this to Sam?