It was one o'clock when Catherine hurried along the side street, looking anxiously for the number Margaret had given her. The interview with the President had delayed her; it had left her in a state of pleasurable excitation, like the humming of many tiny insects. Across Madison Avenue. She came to a group of old gray buildings, houses, with excrescenses of recent date on the ground floor,--a cleaning establishment--funny how you always saw clothes you liked in cleaners' windows!--an interior decorator's, with heavy tapestry draped over an amazing gilt chair. There, the entrance was just between those shops. Didn't look much like a club. She climbed the stairs cautiously; a door above her opened, and two women came past her, sending her expectant glances, their voices sharp and bright against the confusion of sound into which she climbed. She stopped at the door, keenly self-conscious, as if the pattern of voices was complete, and her entrance might break through the warp. The pattern broke as she looked about the room, large and low, with separate nodules of women. Margaret's bright head shot up from the group near the fireplace, and Margaret swung across the room toward her, slim and erect in her green dress. Amy strolled after her; she had removed her squirrel turban, but her dark hair still made a stiff flange about her thin face. "This is fine! We've saved a table--" and Catherine, following them into the dining room, edging between the little tables, found herself drawn into the pattern of sound. "I'm sorry I am late." She slipped her coat over the chair. "The President was talking to me"--she had to release some of the tiny, humming insects--"about my trip west." She told them about that trip. It stepped forward out of dream regions into reality as she talked, as they put in questions, sympathetic, approving questions. "What does the King say?" Margaret smiled at her. "Oh, he doesn't say much." Catherine laughed. Why, she could joke about him! She felt a hard brilliance carry her along, as if--she sent little glances about the room, at the women near her--something homogeneous about them--unlike the girls at the St. Francis, still more unlike the woman who lunched at the Acadia, or at Huylers--something sufficient, individual--"What kind of a club is this, anyway?" "We wanted a place downtown here where we could have good food. All the lugs are in the kitchen. Wonderful cook!" Amy leaned across the table, her eyes afire. She could be intense over food, too, then! "A place where one might bring a guest. City Club too crowded, too expensive, too--too too! for independent women. There were eleven of us, originally. We called it the "Little Leaven," you know. Now there are several hundred. All sorts. Writers, artists, editors. That's a birth control organizer, and the woman with her is an actress. Anybody interesting comes to town, we haul her in to speak in the evening. Men always have comfortable clubs. This is for us."