CHAPTER 10He went back down the walk. Sergeant Buck, waiting, in effect, at attention, saluted in effect and fell in. I stood there, watching them go along the side of the house to the street, shivering, not so much from the external cold as from some kind of a numbness inside my own brain. Then Sandy opened the garden door.
“Playing statues?” he asked. “I guess ‘Niobe Weeping For Her Children.’ ”
I blinked. I hadn’t realized I had tears in my eyes. It was the first time, for one thing, that I’d ever seen Colonel Primrose stop at the threshold of his duty. That he’d done it to keep from embarrassing me somehow made it worse.
“Wrong,” I said. “It’s The Thinker.’ ”
“Then quit it, Grace,” he said. “It’s been the ruin of your whole s*x. Don’t you know?”
He closed the door behind me and he
