"You might have a point there," she said. "I tried everything from the movies to sculpture. I wasn't very good at anything. What do you do, Fred?"
"I'm a perpetual guest," I said lightly. "Do you read much, Jean?"
"Too much, though nothing very heavy, I grant you."
"Have you ever read about a man named Ambrose Bierce?"
"I've read everything he ever wrote. Why did you ask that, Fred?"
"I—heard about him. I wondered who he was."
"Where did you hear about him, Fred? In Mexico?"
"No. I don't remember where I heard about him."
"He disappeared," she said quietly, "some time right before the first world war. I've forgotten the exact year. I think it was 1914."
Before the war, before the "first" war.... And I thought of Jars' wife, who had come to us just before this last planetary war—the "second" world war. And what was his pet name for her? Guest, he called her, and joked about her coming from another world. But didn't Jars defend the discredited late-in-life theories of Akers? I tried to remember the name of Jars' wife, and then it came.