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the chairs swayed and creaked, and a gathering of more than three people occasioned a symphony of squeaks, groans, and crepitations. The paintings in this room were, with the exception of one rather daring Venus, sylvan scenes. Most of Rhein’s guests, after an hour in the room, went home feeling that the Franco-Prussian War had turned out not badly after all. His Early American room was another triumph of trumpery: it was the common room of a Colonial inn, and included four muskets and a bumper at the fire place for warming steins of ale. Two rugged artificial beams traversed its ceiling. Mr. Rhein had once invited a few of his peers to a party in this room; for the occasion he had hired a model and attired her in a lowcut barmaid’s dress. “It was crazy, man,” she reported afterward. “They kept calling me ‘wench’ and ‘my chuck.’ And nobody laid a hand on me!”
    That was downstairs. The upstairs furnishings were more—but not wholly—contemporary, ranging from solid Grand Rapids to a Danish chair which had proved superfluous at the office. Rhein, with some justice, disliked the Danish chair. A guest would find it comfortable enough, but there were no arms, hence no rests for a drink or an ash tray; and emerging from it was risky (dislocation, coronary) for any of Rhein’s coevals, Rhein’s kitchen was upstairs. It was thoroughly modern and was presided over by an elderly man who had studied in Paris, returned to his native land, and found that he was in line for (at worst) short-order cuisine in diners or (at best) hams, yams, and yassuh on plantations in Grosse Pointe, Kittaning, or Southampton. He had drifted west. Rhein had found him through a Tony agency. The agency woman had listed Robert’s impressive qualifications, and had added casually, “Of course, he’s colored. We don’t usually handle colored help.”
    With sudden and very intense loathing Arthur Rhein said, “You stupid bitch.” It was not like him. It was a reflection of his helplessness. Rhein had one virtue, if no other: he did not understand the commoner prejudices, and he had never consciously felt one. But their existence had never inspired anger, until this day; and now he did not know what to do. He felt that something was expected of him. He felt that the woman had insulted him—more, that she had wantonly trampled upon humanity’s intelligence and honor, gratuitously traduced evolution. This was not the way he expressed it. He expressed it by saying, “You stupid bitch,” and then, because he had felt powerless and had not enjoyed the feeling, he asserted what power he could: “In that case there will be no fee,” he said coldly (the woman had been stunned by his first remark, and made no answer, no slightest protest, now), “and if you set bill collectors after me, if you sue, I shall buy your agency and see that none of you ever works in this field again. I’ll take his card now.”
    Stupefied, the woman handed him a card.
    â€œGood day,” Rhein said. In the corridor, waiting for the elevator, he began to shake. He wondered why he had reacted so violently, but by the next day he was over it; he never bothered to find out.
    Rhein’s dinners were, after that, events. His acquaintances could ignore the motley appointments, and were even able to generate the requisite laughter—Mr. Rhein was, of course, a raconteur. Rhein warmed to the compliments, laughed, poured Rémy Martin with a liberal hand, offered two-dollar Upmanns. On her first visit Helen Harrison had been dazzled, amused, and furious. “The old fool!” she said later. “He can’t even pronounce what Robert cooks.” (They had been served trout with capers, Bâtard-Montrachet ’45, and venison steak, Grands Echézeaux ’34. Under her envy Helen was ecstatic.)
    â€œGive him credit,” Joe said. “Another man his