In New York, the tale is always long, but one gets it in fragments delivered between the necessary snatches of sleep and the attenuated diet of the New Yorker determined to be slim. Molly explained that she was at liberty to introduce me, in a way of speaking, to the city that had so radically changed, so phenomenally grown, during my protracted stay abroad: she had finished the proofs of a volume of her poems and, she added, as usual when she had sojourned in the empyrean, she felt the need of a strongly human contact. I informed her that on my own part I had come back to write a book about the ways and mistakes of Americans in France; one had to get out of a place in order to write a novel about it. When conversing with Molly Underhill, the trick was to watch her face; her expression might not harmonize with her words. I was at a disadvantage when she drawled: “And then, my lamb, you purpose leaving New York in order to write a book about us? Oh, you’ll get stories out of us! You can’t conceive of the racket instituted by our crowd; and Eva Litchfield is our pacemaker. I suspect it’s because of an underlying discontent with her failure in the marriage line.” Molly forced information only upon reluctant listeners. It was as if I harboured no curiosity that I asked: “Why do you call it a failure?” “The look in her mother-in-law’s eye,” chuckled Molly; and hung up. She had a lip-licking chuckle. It prepared me to combat whatever position she had taken in regard to Eva Litchfield. I did not go so far as to decide to range myself squarely on Eva’s side, it being problematical if a fight were raging around her or if she herself had precipitated some squabble among her friends. This point time, and no human reasoning, would clear up. In our crowd, one always disputed, but the gage of battle, promptly trampled underfoot, was soon overlooked, the war cry settled on when all was over.