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Bingham came to the only point that mattered: wives were to be tolerated, no more.
    “He’s gone to Palm Beach. With the McLeans. He hates the cold. So do I. But I’ve got so much to do here. You see, we went and bought this big house on Wyoming Avenue that’s in two parts. We live in the one part and we rent out the other. Well, there’s no end of bother with tenants, isn’t there?”
    Mrs. Bingham said, “I wouldn’t know.”
    “You must come see us when we’re settled in. You, too, Mrs. Sanford. I’ve been to your brother’s lovely home.”
    “Almost as big as the McLeans’.” Jesse made his contribution.
    “My daughter finds it quite large enough these days.” With her usual swift thrust, Mrs. Bingham reminded them that Mrs. Blaise Delacroix Sanford was none other than her own daughter Frederika—my protégée, thought Caroline, who was more glad than not to have got Blaise married to someone whocould put up with his uneasy temper, so like their father’s, though unlike that once larger-than-life now smaller-than-death monster, Blaise was not yet mad. Caroline quite admired her sister-in-law’s strength of character, particularly the way she had, socially at least, dropped her mother once she had leapt to the top of their world. Neither Blaise nor Frederika ever appeared at Mrs. Bingham’s “at homes” to the Congress, nor was Mrs. Bingham invited to the Sanfords except for a private meal in the bosom of the family, the very last place that Mrs. Bingham ever wanted to be. Caroline herself was less strict than Frederika. Also, Mrs. Bingham was her invention; and never to be abandoned. She was good value, too, if one could separate her inventions from those shiny disreputable truths for which she had a magpie’s eye.
    Mrs. Harding was staring at Caroline. She had left her card upon first arrival in the city in early 1915; and that had been that. “You must come to us, Mrs. Sanford. We’re simple folk, but I know you’re a friend of Nick Longworth …”
    “And here,” said Caroline, saved by the appearance of a handsome creature all in blue, “is Mrs. Longworth.”
    “Caroline.” The women embraced. “Mrs. Bingham.” Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s cold gray-blue eyes were aslant with controlled laughter. Mrs. Bingham had that effect on her. “Mrs. Harding!” Alice’s eyes went suddenly wide; laughter was choked off at the source.
    “I was just telling about your Nick and my Warren.” The “Warren” came out in a staccato roar of “r’s” which sounded to Caroline like “Wurr-rren.”
    “They play poker,” Alice announced brightly. “In your apartment …”
    “
House
, in two parts,” began Mrs. Harding with a look of steel in
her
cold gray-blue eyes. Caroline was not certain which of the two would win if war came. Alice’s wild sense of humor was a sword on which she might yet herself fall. While Mrs. Harding—what was her name?—Florence—would never give way. Ordinarily the two ladies would not have met but for the fact that Alice’s husband was a congressman from Ohio, whose senator was Warren Harding: as a result, neither lady could ignore the other. But thus far Alice had collected the most points. “I must come see your apartment—I mean house. I don’t go,” she turned to Caroline, “because I’m not invited to the poker games. Only boys allowed. Even though I’m a very good poker player.” She turned to Mrs. Harding. “Maybe you and I should have all-girl all-night poker games, Florence.” Alice said the name with sufficient space all round it to leave room for a shroud.
    “I’m Jesse Smith,” said Jesse Smith, taking Alice’s hand. “From Ohio, too.”
    “Lucky,” said Alice, “you.”
    “I think you know my friends the McLeans. She plays poker, Evalyn does. Pretty good, too.”
    “Oh, God!” Alice had long since ceased to attend the Ohioans. “Cousin Eleanor! She’s like a lighthouse, isn’t she? So tall, so full of light. I must go