"Où est Ma'm'selle Zona?" she asked.
The waiter actually understood, and, though it would have been so much easier in English, Belle conveyed the idea that she would like to talk to Miss Dare and the waiter agreed to get her, though I felt he restrained himself with difficulty from replying in good Manhattanite, "Sure, miss, I'll dig her up"—meaning from the olfactory Hades beneath us.
Zona Dare proved to be a slender youngish lady, with the conventional shock of dark bobbed hair—with a dilettante exterior but a very practical secret self, I am sure. Even a mere introduction to her told me she was a member of that curious "third sex" that evolution is giving us. I can't exactly describe it. It is not "she" or "he" exactly, neither he-woman nor she-man. Certainly it is not neuter. Maybe when nature, or whatever it is that is operating, gets through we may be able to classify it.
Belle knew her, of course. Belle knew everybody. In fact she knew her so well that Zona, on urging, consented to sit down with us awhile and actually ordered tea—in a pot, too, though whether Russian, English or Scotch or Rye I am not sure. At any rate, it seemed to promote conversation and confidence and I covered my raillery with protective coloring.
What I enjoyed was the utter freedom of the conversation. We had soon progressed to bolshevism and the government ownership and operation of women. Finally the conversation put into the ultimate port of the "new morality."
"One must live one's life," seemed to be the burden of the philosophy, and I did not quarrel with the 1919 model of hedonism, for by this time I began to see a ray of hope that finally I might learn something about those whom Kennedy and I had been studying. I recalled Vina's remark to us over her contemplated divorce, "I believe every woman should live her own life as she sees fit." Doubtless she had absorbed it here.
It was evident, however, that there could only be so many triangles a week—and besides, "the eternal triangle" was in itself condemned by its mere ancient origin. What next? I guessed right—bolshevism, of course.
I found I had dropped right into the intelligenzia—the very sovietment of society, where The Nation and The New Republic were considered hide-bound conservatives. I did not quarrel even at the addition of red to the orange-and-blue color scheme, though I adopted the attitude of one mildly seeking the truth.
"Perhaps Freud can explain," I suggested, after one passage at arms with Zona, ably seconded by Belle, "why it is that a prosperous aristocratic feminist should enjoy contemplating casting her rope of pearls before the proletariat. What do these comfortable nibblers at anarchy expect to get out of it?"
There was an answer. I have forgotten it, but it was clever and convincing. It always is, just as glib sophistry and specious phrases are. The gist was that all psychology, science, the history of the human race, had been superseded by some quite indefinite idea originated in a land with problems about as much related to us as the dredging of Martian canals would relate to Suez and Panama.