I go out to lunch with a reporter in the taxi--and what luncheons: hen luncheons in Fifth Avenue! Lovely women with bare white chests, pearls, and tulle sleeves--never saw such clothes--and apparently all for themselves. There is never a man. They even pay one another compliments. I wonder if they can be contented. Today I lunched with Rose Post, who is a great kind dear. I had a very pleasant woman on my right, but on my left was a Mrs. Butler, whose husband is president of Columbia University. She wouldn’t speak to me--she couldn’t bear even to look at me. I expect she thought I was a Bolshevik. I went from there to see Mrs. Otto Kahn. She received me among Botticelli’s and tapestries. It was a beautiful room, and one had a feeling of repose. Money can buy beautiful things, but it cannot buy atmosphere, and that was of her own creating. It felt very restful; just for a while I was in Italy...! She dropped me at the VANITY FAIR Office, and I went up to the fifteenth floor and saw Mr. Crowninshield and Mr. Condé Nast, editors respectively of VANITY FAIR and VOGUE. I knew them in London. Mr. Heywood Broun, dramatic critic, was there. He seemed to have that rather Latin humor, which is “moqueur.” They were all very humorous, and there is a good deal to be humorous about at this moment, where I am concerned! “Crownie” was an angel; he and Mr. Nast decided to give a dinner for me. A “fun” dinner, all of people who “do” things, what he called “tight rope dancers” and “high divers”--not social swells! He offers me a peace room to write in--a lawyer to protect me, and advances of money! Truly I have good friends! At six when I got back to the Biltmore, Colin Agnew, whose firm gave me an exhibition in London last year, rushed in--he goes to England on the Aquitania tomorrow; he says I may have the firm’s flat on East 55th St. till April! What a godsend: a private place in which to lay my weary head, and a home for Dick. How happy I shall be! Colin says the only trouble is that the heating apparatus occasionally breaks down. This is good news, for central heating is asphyxiating. If I open the windows I freeze, and if I shut them I suffocate. Dick drinks ice water all day and says he likes America! At ten thirty P.M. I was called to the telephone by a man who said he was Russian, and member of an art club, and asked if he might come and fetch me there and then, to take me down to the club, as the members would so appreciate me, and he thought I should be interested...! I told him I wasn’t going off in a taxi at that hour with any strange man! FEBRUARY 4, 1921.