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From the moment of their entrance Joel’s day bound itself up inextricably with theirs. As he joined the group around them Stella turned away from it with an impatient little tongue click–and Miles Calman said to the man who happened to be next to him:

"Go easy on Eva Goebel. There’s hell to pay about her at home. " Miles turned to Joel, "I’m sorry I missed you at the office yesterday. I spent the afternoon at the analyst’s. "

"You being psychoanalyzed?"

"I have been for months. First I went for claustrophobia, now I’m trying to get my whole life cleared up. They say it’ll take over a year. "

"There’s nothing the matter with your life," Joel assured him.

"Oh, no? Well, Stella seems to think so. Ask anybody–they can all tell you about it," he said bitterly.

A girl perched herself on the arm of Miles’ chair; Joel crossed to Stella, who stood disconsolately by the fire.

"Thank you for your telegram," he said. "It was darn sweet. I can’t imagine anybody as good-looking as you are being s
o good-humored. "

She was a little lovelier than he had ever seen her and perhaps the unstinted admiration in his eyes prompted her to unload on him–it did not take long, for she was obviously at the emotional bursting point.

"–and Miles has been carrying on this thing for two years, and I never knew. Why, she was one of my best friends, always in the house. Finally when people began to come to me, Miles had to admit it. "

She sat down vehemently on the arm of Joel’s chair. Her riding breeches were the color of the chair and Joel saw that the mass of her hair was made up of some strands of red gold and some of pale gold, so that it could not be dyed, and that she had on no make-up. She was that good-looking–

Still quivering with the shock of her discovery, Stella found unbearable the spectacle of a new girl hovering over Miles; she led Joel into a bedroom, and seated at either end of a big bed they went on talking. People on their way to the washroom glanced in and made wisecracks, but Stella, emptying out her story, paid no attention. After a while Miles stuck his head in the door and said, "There’s no use trying to explain something to Joel in half an hour that I don’t understand myself and the psychoanalyst says will take a whole year to understand. "

She talked on as if Miles were not there. She loved Miles, she said–under considerable difficulties she had always been faithful to him.

"The psychoanalyst told Miles that he had a mother complex. In his first marriage he transferred his mother complex to his wife, you see–and then his sex turned to me. But when we married the thing repeated itself–he transferred his mother complex to me and all his libido turned toward this other woman. "

Joel knew that this probably wasn’t gibberish–yet it sounded like gibberish. He knew Eva Goebel; she was a motherly person, older and probably wiser than Stella, who was a golden child.

Miles now suggested impatiently that Joel come back with them since Stella had so much to say, so they drove out to the mansion in Beverly Hills. Under the high ceilings the situation seemed more dignified and tragic. It was an eerie bright night with the dark very clear outside of all the windows and Stella all rose-gold raging and crying around the room. Joel did not quite believe in picture actresses’ grief. They have other preoccupations–they are beautiful rose-gold figures blown full of life by writers and directors, and after hours they sit around and talk in whispers and giggle innuendoes, and the ends of many adventures flow through them.