She cast upon him the look she would give a charmless milliner, and then, taking her friend by the arm, left.

Chaplin watched them go. He found the bar and asked for tea. He was rewarded with a squint, and then, when it became apparent he hadn’t been asking for anything in code, the barkeep pointed him toward the kitchen.

He passed Mildred, who, though still clad in her red swim cap and towel, hadn’t yet made it to the waves. She was engaged in conversation with Elliott Dexter, a criminally handsome man slightly older and much taller than Chaplin, and she was hiding her smile behind her hand in a way she hadn’t quite done for him.

Dexter spoke with the mid-Atlantic enunciation of a stage performer, which he had been for years before motion pictures created an unexpected second career. He had the jaded affect of one who realized that the party, the business, the ambition, were all just a bit silly. Chaplin would have liked him had Dexter not been impressing a girl whom, he had to remind himself, he didn’t want.

“I was telling Mildred,” Dexter said, “I’m not sure I understood that the party needed a theme.”

“There’s a theme,” Mildred repeated.

“Mr. Goldwyn insisted on the theme of ‘All is vanity,’” Dexter said, taking a slow drink and smiling halfway.

“Oh, Lord, is that why the poetry—”

“And the trees, and the statues—”

“I haven’t seen statues.”

“They aren’t here yet. I believe that’s the climax. Parties apparently need climaxes now.” Dexter sighed as if he were stranded among well-meaning savages who worshipped the most charming idols.

“What would the point be of all this?” Chaplin asked.

“I wish Goldwyn were a nihilist. It would spare us all.” Which made Chaplin laugh, which made him angry. Another sip of his drink, then Dexter said, “Not that a crowd like this couldn’t stand a little moral education.”

This felt like a challenge. “When it comes down to it, half of Hollywood is Emma Bovary, when you think about it,” Chaplin said. “We are all terribly bourgeois, actually.”

Dexter gave a pleased nod. “I hadn’t thought about it that way.” Meaning also he hadn’t realized the clown Chaplin could think of such a thing.

“Of course, we haven’t a hardworking doctor of a husband to bankrupt along the way. All we have is Goldwyn and Zukor.”

Dexter laughed, but, more important, Chaplin saw new credit in his eyes.

He continued: “All that’s left is for each and every one of us to throw ourselves under the wheels of a train.”

Dexter swallowed. “I suppose so,” he said, betraying the tiniest confusion, and Chaplin knew the man had never cracked a word of Flaubert. Ha!