His meeting with Walter wasn’t for another fifteen minutes, so he sat behind his desk, elbows on the table and forefingers interlocked as he stroked his mustache and scoured the paper. He didn’t want to miss anything before he saw Walter; the publishing veteran was always one step ahead, and he didn’t like it if his employees weren’t in the know too. When Theo had satisfied himself that he was well versed in the day’s news, he strode up the corridor to Walter’s office, and the secretary ushered him in.

An expansive window formed one entire wall, framing a panorama of the skyline, from the vast girders of the highways and elevated tracks uptown, all the way down to the Brooklyn dockyards and the semirural suburbs beyond.

Theo accepted the offer of freshly brewed coffee and settled into one of the deep sofas just as Walter appeared in his usual business attire. He had a wardrobe of near-identical clothes—dark brown three-piece suits, pressed white shirts, patterned bow ties and tan brogues—about which Virginia endlessly teased him.

“Theo, how are you?” He walked over briskly, shook Theo’s hand and took a seat in the armchair opposite.

Theo found it a bit unnerving to look at the same narrow face as Virginia’s, although thankfully Walter’s dark hair had turned gray, and small round spectacles were perched on the ridge of his feline nose, framing dark restless eyes most unlike his daughter’s. His uneven frown lines made him look older than his fifty-two years, and he managed to keep his tan all year round.

“I’m well, thank you, Walter. How’s everything with you?”

“Good, a busy week. I’m glad we could get together this morning, though. We’ll see each other at Virginia’s birthday lunch on Saturday, of course, but I wanted to talk to you about something first.”

“What’s on your mind?” Theo asked. He readied himself; he’d spent most of the night working out the right way to say no, but he knew how convincing Walter could be.

Walter shifted to the edge of his seat, hands clasped together, legs angled outward, tartan socks barely covering his ankles. “You and I know that while the war is taking place thousands of miles away, there’s a battle being fought right here—a mental battle.” His finger prodded the top of the glazed coffee table, his slow, deliberate enunciation using his Oxford-English diction to its full effect. “It’s the ideas we discuss with our friends at the bar, the ones we talk about over the dinner table, that count in that battle.”