There are even more difficult men. I know of one who writes. He has to be so protected from the rude environment of this material world that while the muse moves him, his meals carefully prepared by his wife’s own hands, because she knows so well what suits his sensitive digestion, are brought to his door. She may not speak to him as she passes in the tray. No servant is ever permitted to do the cleaning in his sanctum. It disturbs the “atmosphere,” he says. So his wife herself even washes the floor. Hush! His last novel went into the sixth edition. He’s a genius. And his wife says, “You have to take every care of a man who possesses temperament. He’s so easily upset.” For the lack of a salad just right, a book might have failed. ’Er, do you know of any genius of the feminine gender for whom the gods arrange such happy auspices as that? Is there any one trying to be a prominent business or professional woman for whom the wrinkles are all smoothed out of the way of life as for the prominent professional man whom I have mentioned? We who sat around a dinner table not long ago knew of no such fortunate women among our acquaintance. That dinner, for instance, hadn’t appointed itself. Our hostess, a magazine editor, had hurried in breathless haste from her office at fifteen minutes of six to take up all of the details that demand the “touch of a woman’s hand.” The penetrating odour of a roast about to burn had greeted her as she turned her key in the hall door. She rushed to the oven and rescued that. Two of the napkins on the table didn’t match the set. Marie, the maid, apologetically thought they would “do.” They didn’t. It was the magazine editor who reached into the basket of clean laundry for the right ones and ironed them herself because Marie had to be busy by this time with the soup. The flowers hadn’t come. She telephoned the florist. He was so sorry. But she had ordered marguerites, and there weren’t any that day. Yes, if roses would answer instead, certainly he would send them at once. The bon bons in yellow she found set out on the sideboard in a blue dish. Why weren’t they in the dish of delicate Venetian glass of which she was particularly fond? Well, because the dish of delicate Venetian glass had gone the way of so many delicate dishes, down the dumb waiter shaft an hour ago. Marie didn’t mean to break it, as she assured her mistress by dissolving in tears for some five minutes while more important matters waited. A particular sauce for the dessert depending on the delicacy of its flavouring, the editor must make herself. Well—after everything was all right, it was a composed and unperturbed and smiling hostess who extended the welcome to her invited company.