“Waiter, bring me my bill,” said Mr. Morgan with a foolish grin. “And cancel my membership in the Somerset. The bouncer gives me the creeps. Are you coming, baby?”

“No,” said Hopestill. “Before you go, Harry, will you apologize to all of us?”

“Now I suggest,” said Mrs. Babbitt in the voice of a peacemaker, “that Harry and John and I all go eat dinner by ourselves and let the ladies and gentlemen alone. Nobody’s mad now but if we don’t go right along everybody will be dreadfully mad except me.”

“I won’t be mad,” pouted Mr. Babbitt. “And Olga won’t be mad, will you, Olga?”

“Well, I’m damned,” said Mr. Morgan, using his hands as binoculars and directing them towards me. “Is that Olga? Troika-ho, Olga!”

They left, Mrs. Babbitt’s giggles leaving a wake behind. If I had been able to speak, I would have been profane, would have used every blasphemous and scatalogical oath I knew to tell Hopestill how I was affected by the knowledge that I had been the object of amused discussion. Olga! Her malice was so rich, so inventive that even now, exposed by the babblings of her drunken friends, she tried to hoodwink me. “I don’t think Sonie looks all that Slavic, do you, Frank?”

The evening lay in ruins. My disappointments, my humiliation, and my scorn bustled through the branches of my nerves, created a tic here and a tingling there, an ache in my skull and fever in my eyeballs.

Mr. Whitney touched my arm. “Will you have dinner with me?” he asked.

Hopestill smiled. “Give the poor child a stout drink,” she said. “She isn’t used to the lower classes.”

“Oh, I’ll have a lot to drink,” I said, and she and Philip laughed. They had forgotten us already before we had even reached the threshold. Hopestill was saying, “Well, darling, I’ve come home to stay. Aren’t you glad?”

•

As soon as I could I left the Countess’ salon and got my cape, but as I was starting down the hall towards the stairs someone laid his hand on my shoulder and I turned to find myself the captive of Mr. Pingrey. He said, “Sonia, Amy is in a tiz over your cutting her. You come straight along with me, you baggage. Mr. Hornblower is here and you have to meet him. He’s just been telling the most delicious thing about Mr. Roosevelt. Did you know that the name is really Rosenfeld?” I was in no frame of mind to meet Your Esteemed Uncle Arthur Hornblower and told Mr. Pingrey that Miss Pride had asked me to run home to fetch something for her.

“Oh, stuff!” said Mr. Pingrey, flapping his hands limply in my face. “You’re a perfect imp sometimes. Very well, but I will absolutely disown you if you don’t meet him when you come back. Do you realize that he knows everyone of importance? Gandhi, Mussolini, Hitler, Trotsky, the Lord knows who. He’s the most literate person here by far.”