As I went in search of Hope’s cousin, the Countess, fragrant as a whole garden, came towards me with outspread arms, bumping everyone who stood in her way, among them the easily terrified Mr. Otis Whitney who immediately fled through the drawing-room in the direction of the door and was not seen again. She had nothing to tell me of any more consequence than that she loved me and that I was not to wear anything ever again but the same shade of green that I had on today and that if I did not come to hear the “Scarlatti I’ve dismembered, dismembered, my angel,” at her next Friday, her heart would be broken into a thousand pieces. As she embraced me at our leavetaking—she had of course given me a welcoming hug and had let me go for only about a minute—she dropped her effusive tone and spoke as if we were contemporaries: “I’m not pleased, Sonie! I’m much distraught. I’ve been talking with a young man who has given me a real fright. You . . .”

But she could not finish for, to my great vexation, we were interrupted by one of the girls who came to the Fridays. Martha Dole was a large, plain bluestocking whose embonpoint was apportioned helter-skelter so that the thin, rectilinear legs did not harmonize with the bossy torso and likewise the long, willowy neck was inadequate support for the full-blown Norman face. She, like the other young ladies, had always shown me great cordiality in the Countess’ presence, and had two or three times sent me tickets to the theater or to concerts with which, to be sure, she had parted because she could not use them herself but which were accompanied by a flattering note which told me I was more deserving than she to hear the music or to see the play. Only three nights before, I had gone, thanks to her generosity, to see Hamlet, but this had not prevented her, on the following day, from becoming suddenly so engrossed in her companions that she did not see me, even though I passed directly in front of her, when I entered the cocktail lounge of the Parker House to keep an appointment with Nathan and Kakosan. Yet, her first remark to me this afternoon was, “Who was that lovely girl, Japanese, Chinese, whatever she was, that I saw you with the other day?”