Free A Shade of Difference by Allen Drury Page B

California nod briefly to Senator Cooley and leave the chamber. “My dear,” Patsy Labaiya whispers loudly behind her hand, “some of them look like BLACK GREEK GODS!” Kitty responds with a brightly absent-minded smile and, as she does so, catches the thoughtful eye of Celestine Barre. She knows at once that the wife of the French Ambassador is also reminded of color, and so of Africa, and so of Gorotoland, and of Terry, and of the UN, where events may soon take a turning that could conceivably bring to an end an association possessed of a warmth notably pleasant and notably close in the annals of the Washington diplomatic corps.
    This, Kitty thinks with a real regret, will be too bad if it happens; but if it must, she knows there is nothing for it but to smile and say the usual cordially empty things and make the best of it. These necessary estrangements occur in international politics as in domestic—indeed, it has been quite unusual that the Ambassadors of the two major West European powers and their wives should have been good friends at all, so many are the points of friction between their countries—but Kitty is one of the world’s nicest people and quite capable of not liking what her husband’s profession requires them to do. She knows that he doesn’t like it, either, for he told her before going up to New York a couple of days ago that “things may get a little sticky with Raoul and Celestine, but let’s keep on with it as long as we can.” So they are both hoping that what is known at the United Nations as “The Problem of Gorotoland” may be settled without too intense a strain upon either their personal or national relationships with the Barres. But they are aware that the chances of so pleasant a solution are slim, especially since the Russians, with their grim determination to inflame every friction and destroy every hope for peace, will be busily working on an Anglo-French split along with all their other little projects.
    She looks again at Celestine with a smile that holds both worry and affection, and Celestine smiles back in much the same way. Patsy Labaiya, sitting between them, suddenly asks, “Why doesn’t that OLD FUDDY-DUDDY sit down?” in a whisper so loud that Tom August actually looks up at the gallery with a startled and annoyed expression. The Problem of Gorotoland is temporarily forgotten as all the ladies again exchange amused smiles.
    Actually on this occasion, as on so many others, the wife of the Ambassador of Panama is proceeding, with methods that have often proved effective before, in pursuit of purposes that most people usually do not suspect. All of her present companions are aware that there is a lot more to Patsy Jason Labaiya than appears on the ostensibly rattlebrained surface, but this knowledge is not shared by the general public or even by many people in Washington.
    “Patsy Labaiya is a very clever woman,” Beth Knox remarked to her husband when they came home from the diplomatic reception where they had met her for the first time, but Orrin only snorted. “She is? She conceals it well.” “Beautifully,” Beth agreed, and suggested that he file the fact away somewhere in his mind for future use.
    But Orrin had apparently dismissed it, even though he made no attempt to hide from his wife the fact that he considered Patsy’s brother to be someone worthy of the greatest respect and wariness in the political arena. Nobody had ever called Edward Jason, Governor of California, a stupid man, and Beth could not understand why it was so difficult for Orrin to imagine that some of the family brains might have been conferred upon his sister. Possibly it was because the Governor could conceivably pose some threat to Orrin’s ultimate ambitions that Orrin was willing to concede his abilities and not do the same for Patsy; or possibly it was just that men in politics, even more than men in other lines of endeavor, tend to be unwilling to accord full equality of