“The tone, dear Gene, has all the unction, all the earnest turgidity of a theologian. You are perfect.” Clarissa beamed at me wickedly over lunch in the Plaza Hotel. We sat at a table beside a great plate-glass window through which we could see the frosted bleak expanse of Central Park, dingy in city snow, ringed by buildings like so many mountain peaks, monotonous in their sharp symmetry. The sky was sullen, gray with more snow to fall. The year was nearly over. “I thought it really quite to the point,” I said loftily but with an anxious look at the thin black volume between us which was that day to be published. The hasty work of one hectic month released in record time by a connection of Paul Himmell’s. “It’s pure nonsense, your historical part. _I_ know, though I confess I was never one for the philosophers in those days ... dreary _egotistical_ men, worse than the actors and not half so lovely. Waiter, I will have a melon: out of season I hope. I suggest you have it too. It’s light.” I ordered _pot-de-crême_, the heaviest dessert on the menu. “I’ve made you angry,” Clarissa pretended contrition. “I was only trying to compliment you. What I meant was that the sort of thing you’re doing I think is nonsense only because action is what counts, action on any level ... not theorizing.” “There’s a certain action to _thinking_, you know, even to writing about the thoughts of others.” “Oh, darling, don’t sound so stuffy. Your dessert, by the way, poisons the liver. Oh, isn’t that Bishop Winston over there by the door, in tweed? In mufti, eh, Bishop?” The Bishop, who was passing our table in the company of a handsomely pale youth whose contemplation of orders shone in his face like some cherished sin, stopped and, with a smile, shook Clarissa’s hand. “Ah, how are you? I missed you the other night at Agnes’s. She told me you’ve been engaged in social work.” “A euphemism, Bishop.” Clarissa introduced me and the prelate moved on to his table, a robust gray-haired man with good coloring and a look of ease. “Catholic?” “No, Episcopal. I like them the best, I think. They adore society and good works ... spiritual Whigs you might call them, a civilizing influence. Best of all, so few of them believe in God, unlike the Catholics or those terrible Calvinist peasants who are forever saving themselves and damning others.” “I think, Clarissa, you’re much too hard on the Episcopalians. I’m sure they must believe what they preach. At least the clergy do.” “Well, we shall probably never know. Social work! I knew Agnes would come up with something altogether wrong. Still, I’m just as glad it’s not out yet. Not until the big debut tomorrow afternoon. I hope you’ve made arrangements to be near a television set. No? Then come to my place and we’ll see it together. Cave’s asked us both to the station, by the way, but I think it better if we not distract him.” “Iris came East with him?”