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.”

I felt this to be a slight exaggeration, but said I had not been aware that the Countess’ parties were intended to be the meeting ground of minds.

“Well!” he gasped. “Frankly I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why on earth would one come otherwise?”

“Why, to drink,” I said.

Mr. Pingrey did not drink or smoke, making his abstention from alcohol, tobacco, and highly seasoned food a fetish as obstinate as a vice. He put his hand to his heart as if he had been wounded there and might, after his valedictory, topple over dead at my feet. “I cannot, I simply cannot understand this transformation in you.” His eyes, similar to Amy Brooks’ (both of them were victims of excessive thyroid secretions, a bond which strengthened their friendship, I am sure, and played a strong part in their marriage and their subsequent production of two children with the same glandular vagary), bulged forth as he bent his ruddy face down towards mine to gaze upon the frog which, before the gods had been provoked to wrath, had been a charming maiden.