The more fed up I became with our “cultured” friends and interests, the more Leon became absorbed in them. He was a thorough-going æsthete and the more æsthetic he grew, the more discontented I became, until it seemed that life held absolutely nothing of interest for me. For days and weeks at a time I carried a grouch and consoled myself by making the aforementioned complaints to the Creator. Every time Aunt Elinor entertained, I had to perform for the benefit of the guests, and afterwards everyone would feed her a lot of slush about my “remarkable talent for the dance.” You might have thought I was some kind of thoroughbred dog, the way they studied me and passed comments on my body and brains. My Aunt should have known long before that time that her niece had a beautiful body and enough brains to know how to use it, but she continued to gather in the same old line of flattery and flowery compliments until you’d have thought it was her own body people were talking about. Of course, not all of her parties were utter bores. Now and then a few genuine people appeared on the scene and once in a while someone actually interesting would be present. It was at one of her soirées that I met Jay-Jay Marfield, the rather attractively ebullient son of one of Broadway’s most successful producers. Jay-Jay (from his initials, J. J.) was about twenty-six when I first met him and rather handsome in a sort of romantic fashion. My Aunt fell in love with him at first sight—principally because she thought that if I cultivated his friendship he could help me along in my career. My Aunt was not exactly a hand-shaker; she just had rather continental ideas about matrimony: marriage was a material affair to her. She would have been in ecstasies if I had married Jay-Jay and she used to tell him the most awful lies about my habits and disposition, et cetera. She tried all the traditional tricks of the match-maker, but I had my doubts about Jay-Jay’s falling for her ensnaring line. As for me, I was willing enough to let him show me a good time—the which he certainly tried to do, with everything from the Russian Ballet to opium dens thrown in. He knew all the celebrities of the stage and was always on the verge of introducing me to So-and-So sometime—while in the meantime he introduced me to a crowd of artistic flat tires who indulged in attic art and garret orgies which were more asinine than sinful. Jay-Jay and I got along famously, but from the start of our friendship I felt that I would never want to trust him very far. Perhaps I am naturally suspicious, but this Jay-Jay was one of the kind that you immediately suspect. Free and easy about everything, always immaculate, always flush and always conniving something that was neither good for himself nor good for me, he made me feel that I had always to be on guard or he would promptly connive against me.