"Those were not only the beryllium days, but the days of animal pictures and horror pictures. Frank Buck and Osa Johnson and Tarzan. Frankenstein. Paramount was trying to combine the grisliest features of all of them. They were making Wells's _Island of Dr. Moreau_--for instance. And I was doing some of the writing. Hence I was an animal-horror man--and young for it, too. Precociously animalistic and horrible. Remember? Cobras fought mongooses? Tigers fought pythons and other unnatural antagonists? Zebus fought gnus? My producer wanted to throw a half dozen lions into a school of big sharks--and get some red-hot close shots of the fights that would then ensue. That--I stopped. Even we ogres draw the line somewhere--and I know a good deal about sharks. The lions, if you once got the sharks hitting them, would not be fighting, as my producer imagined, but dying by mouthfuls." "How awful!" "Pasadena, it was," I reminded her. "Another conference at that big house amongst the thorns. I know the place like a book. I know the spirit of the place. You lived there?" She stared at the room, empty now of all but waiters and two or three pairs of murmuring people. Full, however, of Musak. Light operettas. "Somehow it's easier to talk to strangers," she said, "than to people you've known all your life." "Of course!" I replied in sober agreement--although I thought the idea was rubbish. "And besides," she went on, immediately contradicting herself, "I've read your articles and books and I feel as if I knew you better than you knew yourself." Unlikely, I figured. But this was important to her, so I nodded. "Maybe you do--in some ways." She had shown a certain economy of speech--owing possibly to the fact that I had given her little opportunity to show anything else. But her biography was fairly terse: "I was born in Boston--and the family moved here when I was a baby. My dad graduated from Princeton in 1921. He's a very intelligent, strong-willed, wonderful guy. My mother's a chronic invalid--of her own making. I have one sister--older--and no brothers. I'm very fond of my sister--but I was always jealous of her when I was young. Dad tried to make her a substitute for a son--took her everywhere, taught her sports and games--and I wanted to be the one. She's married and lives in Chicago. I went to school in Westchester--Rosehall--and came out here. At a mass début. Dad's in real estate. After I came out, I fiddled around awhile--Junior League, and Red Cross, and Bar Harbor in the summers--and then I met Rol."