When I asked him what, if anything, I could do about it, he surprised me by referring me to the director of the hall.

Was I sure, he asked, that I knew what I was applying for??

I asked Rawlins.

`` Why '', he went on, `` when Rob asked me if he could make his dive on this trip, I didn't think twice about it.

I have just asked these questions in the Pentagon, in the White House, in offices of key scientists across the country and aboard the submarines that prowl for months underwater, with neat rows of green launch tubes which contain Polaris missiles and which are affectionately known as `` Sherwood Forest ''.

I asked the same questions inside the launch-control rooms of an Atlas missile base in Wyoming, where officers who wear sidearms are manning the `` commit buttons '' that could start a war -- accidentally or by design -- and in the command centers where other pistol-packing men could give orders to push such buttons.

I asked Wisman what would happen if he broke out the go codes and tried to start transmitting one.

I asked.

How, I asked, could chaos be admitted to chaos??

I asked about the battle between life and death in his plays.

Given a theological lead, I asked what he thinks about those who find a religious significance to his plays.

At a party an English intellectual -- so-called -- asked me why I write always about distress.

I was having lunch not long ago ( apologies to N. V. Peale ) with three distinguished historians ( one specializing in the European Middle Ages, one in American history, and one in the Far East ), and I asked them if they could name instances where the general mores had been radically changed with `` deliberate speed, majestic instancy '' ( Francis Thompson's words for the Hound Of Heaven's Pursuit ) by judicial fiat.

Just as I was about to enlarge upon my discovery of the underside of the leaf of love, memory, displeased at being asked to yield its unsavory secrets, dashed ahead of me, calling back over its shoulder: `` Skip it.

The waspish man stopped me three paces from the bicycle barricade, and asked me in French if I had papers to leave France.

I asked him.

I asked.

One of the girl students, sitting by while I ate the thick soup, asked me if I had a sleeping bag.

I asked him.

Once or twice my father asked me if I wasn't overdoing a bit in my churchgoing.

I believed him.

Next to him was a young boy I was sure had sat near me at one of the trading sessions.

In my sights I watched him looming bigger and bigger.

Now under me I could see him for what he really was, a boy dressed up in streaks of paint.

`` I know him.

Once, pressing him, I learned that his job was only part-time, in the afternoons when nothing went on in the hall.

With distaste I saw him assume a pompous air.

At last, when I put it to him directly, the clerk was forced to admit that the delay in my case was unusual.

I was at once disappointed, although just what I had expected him to look like I could not have explained.

`` I never saw him.

`` I can't leave him there.

Donald Kruger would like nothing better than to hold him as hostage, and I wouldn't entrust a snake to his tender care.

But, by gosh, I want him and I'm going to have him!!

I meant him no harm.

I've got to take Danny away from Clayton before I lose him altogether.

I heard o' Texas cattlemen wrappin' a cow thief up in green hides and lettin' the sun shrink 'em and squeeze him to death.

`` I don't know nothin' about him ''.

`` So help me, Crouch, I'd like to kill you where you stand, but, before I do, I'm going to hear you admit killing him.

`` I ain't ragging him ''!!

I didn't get a good look at him at all, his back was to me, and I was so scared It was just somebody in a man's suit.

I just can't take any chances on getting her pregnant, and if we were sleeping together ''

As I dug in behind one of the bales we were using as protection, I grudgingly found myself agreeing with Oso's logic, especially when I imagined what would have happened to Missy if Old Knife's large party of screeching warriors had overrun our company.

`` Damned if I will.

Besides, 'tain't no more'n right for me to follow with my black oxen, so's I can unhook and pull up fast if either of you get in a pinch ''.

But Johnson couldn't quickly unwire the truck door, and if I escaped, he might suffer.

But I promised Joyce I would mention her name, if at all, only as a last resort.

You must forgive me if I seem to dwell too much on her physical aspects but I am an artist, accustomed to studying the physical body.

I felt that her eyes were undressing me as if she were a painter and I a nude model.

I quit work at my usual hour as if this day was no different from other days.

And I will greatly appreciate it if you will not tell your husband.

But a young American has a bath next to his room and I shall ask him if you might use it this once.

`` Or do you want to see if I can stand fever, too ''??

The big man with the whitened hair murmured something: his words sounded as if they were in the Manu tongue, which I recognized, having studied the dialect in my Anthropology 6, class at the University of Chicago.

`` If you will pardon, I think it would be better if not.

and if a poll had been taken immediately following the dispatch of troops to Little Rock I believe the majority would have been for the Old South.

I do not know if such a way of life can come to be a self-conscious challenge, but I suspect that it can.