Urged by a spiritual necessity for physical support, I went over to lean against another door jamb; and from the next room I heard Anthony Bloodgood making love to a New York girl whom we knew as one of those who are “sometimes going to write because they must express themselves.” Anthony’s voice was strange to me; it was as if his heart were singing because he was with her, and I recalled having heard that he had been in love with her since her school days. He said: “When we’re married, Janny, we can have these people at our home.” If she replied, I missed it; but Anthony’s sense of the magnanimity of his conduct again caused his voice to ring out boldly. “You don’t know it, Janny, but I’m not a brute. I know all about it, loveliest! I’m not going to scold you. I’ve done it myself, you see.” “You!” The girl’s laughter was convulsive. “You! Oh---- I can’t bear it!” Indulgently, he shared her amusement. “Carouse around a bit? You don’t think a chap can reach my age without having racketed around town; do you?” All men spoke the same words to all girls; all men, in more or less roundabout ways, boasted of their early peccadillos. I was mildly amused. Glancing around for some answering smile--for this was the only comic relief of the evening--I met the eyes of a woman who had that instant taken up a position which enabled her to watch the pair. This woman, an interior decorator, was herself the rarest decoration of any room. She had a white face to which she added emphasis by her lack of the slightest touch of rouge. Her hair was densely black with no highlights and with not a trace of the blue sheen which is the beauty of actually black hair. Her eyes, a burning black without glitter, and exceptionally large, revealed at this moment a wild intensity. She looked like some ancient conception of a goddess who takes away, but never bestows, life. I remembered that her hand was small and like a bird’s claw, and that it was always bone-dry. This woman, then, stood looking intently at the girl Janny, and the girl left Anthony Bloodgood and went to her. The studio was more peaceful than this, although Florence had been right about the tension in the air--tension flowing after me, catching up with me, as I found a chair in a comparatively hidden nook behind the piano. But in the midst of my burst of pure gratitude for the chair I realized that my host held nicely suspended over the crown of my head a beer bottle, or some such missile. The ludicrous feature of it--if one excepts the character of the weapon--was that he looked thoughtful. “Go on!” I instructed him. “Do it! You haven’t the idea that I care if you bash my head in, have you?”