We had reached our destination, and stood with basement steps backing us and an iron grille forbiddingly confronting us; and in the flickering light from the lantern that threw over the speakeasy entrance the disguise of the picturesque, Molly’s long eyes shone like a wolf’s. The usual reserved orb peered at us through the locked grating; the customary smile greeted us upon our eventual admission; we scuttled the length of the narrow hallway to the rear of the house, squeezing past a fat policeman who lounged inside the barroom door and feelingly averted his gaze. The bar was crowded with our friends, our enemies, and those who had not yet made up their minds about us. They suspended the interchange of their code words, their juggling with words, and Molly seemed gratified at their silence and flattered by the affronted stares directed at her by those whose books she had recently reviewed. A book must be more or less open to ridicule in order to be reviewed by Molly Underhill. I thought: “How strange it is, that I didn’t notice silence, abroad.” But a different language is a barrier and at the same time a protection: if one speaks it, one is still guarded, by its ultimate strangeness, from too close an encroachment. As never in New York, one’s thoughts remain inviolably one’s own. A fat Italian stood before us, beaming professionally. “Mrs. Avery! And Miss Underhill! But how sad it is to see you here without Miss Litchfield!” “What did I tell you?” demanded Molly’s lifted eyebrows. Whatever she intended telling me--and I doubted her ability, if not her willingness, to tell me anything definite about Eva Litchfield--was broken into by the approach of Winnie Conant and her husband, Addis Wickersham. Winnie gushed “Again we meet!” but plainly made mental reservations as to the benefit to New York of my return. In her torrent of words she contrived to nicely mingle sly digs at Eva with encomiums on the proprietor of the speakeasy. “What with living expenses being beyond reason, where would we be without him to cash our checks which we’ve no means of knowing to be good, to give us credit when checks are out of the question----” Having done her duty to the amenities, she fixed me with her glitter. “As I tried to tell you this afternoon--only Florence talks so much----” She went on to inform me that Nicholas Van Suydam was patently destined to ruin Eva’s career. “Such a shame, for a brilliant novelist, as Eva is now acknowledged to be----” I received, squarely between the eyes, Molly’s glance. She enquired, but not as if she solely wished to give Eva her dues: “Does anyone deny that she’s outstripped all of you?”