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the stake. Women were not allowed such vile license in the Puritan republic. Women were not allowed much of anything unless they were rich in their own right, her one glittering advantage, seldom taken advantage of.
    Mrs. Bingham accepted the worship of two new congressional couples who, when they heard Caroline’s name, saw, as it were, divinity. Aware that a newspaper proprietor was the source of all life to the politician, Caroline encouraged lit candles, murmured prayers, whispered confessions because, put simply, she liked power very much.
    Suddenly she felt less sorry for herself, as Mrs. Bingham, punch cup in hand, told her with acrid breath that one of the he’s of her story was standing across the room, a stout dim-looking man named Randolph Boiling, brother to the second Mrs. Woodrow Wilson. “Which,” said Mrs. Bingham, delighted with the horror of it all, “is why
he
is with
him.
”
    “
Who
is with
whom?
” Caroline had always had difficulty following Mrs. Bingham’s higher gossip. Now, half in half out of her dotage, Mrs. Bingham no longer bothered to identify with a name those free-floating pronouns that bobbed in such confusion on the surface of her swift sombre narratives.
    “He—
her
brother.” Mrs. Bingham frowned with annoyance. She disliked the specific. “Randolph Boiling. Over there. With the sheep’s head. Well, he brought
him
. The great speculator. Over there. The Jew. Quite handsome, to give the devil his due.”
    Caroline recognized Bernard Baruch, a very tall, very rich Wall Street speculator who affected a Southern accent so thick that it made Josephus Daniels sound like a Vermont Yankee. Baruch was a New Yorker of Southern origin. He had made a fortune by remembering to sell those stocks which he had bought
before
they cost less than he paid for them, a gift Caroline entirely lacked. She had sat next to Baruch once or twice at dinner and enjoyed his flow of gossip, in which every one of
his
pronouns was firmly attached to a famous name. Like so many newly rich men of no particular world—he was a Jew, she had gathered, only when it suited him—Baruch had been attracted to Washington, to politics, to the President. It was said that he had personally given fifty thousand dollars to Wilson for the election of 1912; it was also said that he used his White House connections to get tipson what stocks to buy. Caroline was hazy about all this. But not Mrs. Bingham, who was now in full swift torrent. “
Mrs. Peck
,” she said the name accusingly, much preferring
she
. “The President’s old mistress—she’s in California now—was threatening to sell the President’s letters to the papers last fall before the election, and so Randolph Boiling got Mr. Baruch to go to her and buy the letters for seventy-five thousand dollars, and that’s how the President could marry Edith Boiling Galt, who’s getting fat, and the President could win the election, just barely.…”
    A plain small woman with a large head marched toward Mrs. Bingham, followed by a plump bespectacled man with a moist palm, as Caroline discovered when it closed all round her own hand. “Mrs. Harding!”
    Mrs. Bingham produced her most ghastly smile for the wife of Ohio’s junior senator, Warren Gamaliel Harding, who, after James Burden Day, was the handsomest man in the Senate. “This is an old friend.” Mrs. Harding pushed her escort forward. “From Washington Court House, in Fayette County. Jesse Smith. Say hello to Mrs. Bingham. Say hello to Mrs. Sanford, Jesse.” The hellos were duly said. Then, to make conversation, Jesse said to Caroline, “I’m a friend of Ned McLean. And Evalyn, too. His wife, you know. With the diamond.”
    “I’m not.” Caroline was gracious. “A friend, that is. I wish,” she was expansive in her insincerity, “that I was.”
    “I can fix it,” said Jesse. “Any time.”
    “Jesse can fix anything.” But Mrs. Harding sounded dubious.
    “Where’s the Senator?” Mrs.