There was a gratifying hush of horror. I whipped out a pencil and scribbled on my cuff. "I've been watching you all with my keen eye," I announced, "and constantly analyzing ... dissecting. I'm going to crucify you in the _New Yorker_." We swept out, and at the door my wife turned and said: "What's more, we're not even married. He's my brother and we're living in incest." Jake liked Square parties. He enjoyed winning respect by admitting that he worked regularly from nine to five, by wearing proper conservative clothes, by showing the outward signs of success which business men understood and approved. He spoke about his profession like an industrialist; and although he was a sensitive, gifted writer, he pooh-poohed such matters as talent and inspiration, and discussed creativity as merchandise, his stock-in-trade. He liked Alice McVeagh's party. It was given in her penthouse on East End Avenue, a Georgian duplex with delicate curving staircases, panelled study, oval library, a ballroom and two kitchens, one for the staff alone. The buffet in the dining room glittered with silver and crystal ... fresh caviar on crushed ice, scarlet lobsters, smoked turkeys, great oriental melons oozing thick nectar, a frosted copper cask in which peaches soaked in liqueurs, and dozens of coffee flagons bubbling over alcohol lamps. The guests were charming. Cool young ladies and their energetic mothers. Pleasant young men Cooper had known at Loomis and Princeton, and the jolly old gentlemen they would in time become. They were all exquisitely casual about the perfection of their dress and manners. They were assured. They belonged. And how badly Jake wanted to belong on their terms. How badly all of us want to belong on somebody else's terms. He was painfully well-behaved. He stood tall and erect and moved slowly, keeping his voice quiet and his hands at his side. He had two sherrys at the bar and chatted respectfully with guests ... a burly gentleman who owned half the cotton mills in New England and was devoted to game fishing, the goggle-eyed son of a near-East ambassador who discoursed in French and broken English on _Le Jazz Hot_, a red-headed man loading up on white Martinis who confessed he taught scene design at Yale, a pregnant young matron who had been a famous debutante.... Jake's deep-lined face was wooden and unrecognizable to Cooper who smiled privately. There was music in the ballroom and couples dashed in to the buffet and back; crop-haired young men and boyish girls with delicious young figures and stereotype faces framed in straight honey hair. Lennox felt awed and hostile toward them. He escorted a brisk dowager to the buffet. She took an instant liking to him (older women always adored Lennox) and favored him with a ringing denunciation of the Metropolitan Opera Management and glowing praise for Charles of the Ritz.