"Men," I went on, "in this century, are deeply imbued with just that personal, feminine attitude. They refuse to meddle with evils that do not immediately threaten them. They have sold out their duty toward the whole species, for local, temporal advantages. They no longer live lives but merely cadge existences. If a guy is successful and well fixed, the ordinary American does not and cannot see that he has the reason or the right--let alone the need!--to take a dim view of anything on earth." I picked up my copy of _Time_ magazine and waved it at her. "Whenever one of my morally indignant volumes appears, this self-righteous periodical, for instance, usually begins its reviews by saying that I own a palatial residence in Florida, earn big money writing commendable hack stories for the magazines, fish all the time, and yet--blackguard!--I have the gall to gripe! The inference is that I am a lunatic. Indeed, it has become more than an inference. This carburetor of the news called my latest effort a 'whiff into midnight.' Who is nearer the witching hour--the well-heeled gent who still sees imperfections in the planet and says so or the editor who unconsciously imagines that prosperity and criticism are incongruent? That is the Ivy League philosophy--suitable to cover the ruins it soon will bring about." "You're mad at Clare Luce," the girl said. "There you go! Personal again! See here, ma'am. A man can get as intense feelings from statistical tables as a woman can from Sinatra's brow wave. Vital statistics give them to me. I had such sensations when, after the publication of the Smythe Report, I pensively ran over the Periodic Table. Many other charts and graphs deeply affect me. I hardly know Clare Luce. I had cocktails with her once--though. Very attractive. Very--not bright--ardent. That's the important thing in women, too. We disagreed about everything we discussed. But a woman who enters the field of ideas is obliged, naturally, to follow some man or men. Women have never left any ideas around for men or women to follow. Clare said she follows Monseigneur Fulton Sheen--another glitteringly ardent soul. I'm not mad at Clare Luce. In my situation I find it impossible to be mad at anybody on earth. And it was generally difficult for me, even before now." "What's happened that made you change?" "God has sent for me," I said sarcastically. "You mean--you've been converted?" "If I am ever converted--in the common sense--it will be the hard way: posthumously and in the Presence. No. The change in me, what little I have so far discovered, probably comes from atrophy. The peace and mellowness that men mistake for wisdom--that is in fact the result of calcium deposits, excess urea in the cells, and so on." "You're forty!" "And you're twenty--instead of twenty-six." "You don't look it." "You do. And as you well know, it's a damn good age for a woman to look." She thought awhile. "You meet a lot of woman." "I meet a few."