The word “gramophone” misled me: I imagined a small box with a black enameled horn, shaped like a morning glory. Such an instrument had been kept in a far corner of the lobby at the Hotel Barstow, and occasionally in the afternoon when the guests had had their naps and had gone out for a brief “constitutional,” I put on “Der Tannenbaum” or “Ich Liebe Dich” or “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes” sung in a sad, rippling tremulo which brought tears to my eyes. I told the Countess I was grateful, but this was a lie: her loving gesture, though it was only a part of her patronizing, impersonal manner, had made me think of my mother and had returned me directly, by no détours of specific memory, to the horror of womanly affection which I thought I had outgrown. As in a long moment when I rested against the firm pouch of her bust and inhaled the odor of lilac, as fresh and springlike as if it came from the living bloom, and my only thought was how best to disengage myself from her embrace, Dr. McAllister, from across the room where he had taken a cocktail to Miss Pride and Mr. Whitney, shot me a look of warning or disapproval and simultaneously I felt the Countess’ strong arm tighten about my waist. Before my mind’s eye, like the immobile tableau of a dream, she and I appeared in this fond attitude, alone, before the sorrowing tin morning-glory in a dim, overheated room. I said in haste, “But I’m not often free. I’m studying stenography and my classes last all day!”

She let me go and laughing on one rich, contralto note, chided me, “Go on then, dissembler! You don’t regret a bit that you can’t tell Bach from Offenbach.”

Everyone laughed at her play on words. Miss Pride smiled and said to me, “You mustn’t miss an opportunity like that, Sonia. Not everyone is admitted to that famous salon.” Horribly embarrassed by my blunder as well as by my egotistical assumption that this resplendent personage had an ulterior motive in her cuddling, I protested, and the hearty woman, speeding me on with a resounding smack on my backside, forgave and engaged me to come two weeks hence to a Kaffeeklatsch where I would find other people “in the same boat” with myself.