As they began on the antipasto he thought to himself: “I must start very gently. Women like men to veil their power.” So he said:
“That was funny, my picking up your magazine the other night, wasn't it? You know I thought it was my copy.”
“Oh, the dear old Oblique! Isn't it a scream? I read myself to sleep with it every night. We'll have to make the most of it while we can, because Mr. Arundel says it can't pay its paper bill much longer.”
This irreverence rather startled Lester, who was writing an article “On the Art of Clara Tice” which he had been hoping the Oblique would buy. In fact, he was startled quite out of the careful conversational paradigm he had planned. He found himself getting a little ahead of his barrage. “Does Mr. Arundel read it?” he asked. “Heavens, no!” cried Miss Denver, and effervesced with laughter. “He would rather face a firing squad than read that kind of stuff. But he has an interest in the concern that supplies their paper.” The matter of paper had never occurred to Lester before. Of course he knew a magazine had to have something to print on, but he had never thought of the editors of a radical review being embarrassed by such a paltry consideration.
“Is Mr. Arundel literary?” he asked.
Miss Denver found this very whimsical. “Say, are you kidding me?” she said, with tilted eyebrows. “The chief says literature is the curse of the publishing business. Every time somebody puts over some highbrow stuff on him we lose money on it. The only kind of literature that gets under his ribs is reports from the sales department.”
“That's very Philistine, isn't it?”
“Sure it is, but it puts the frogs in the pay envelopes, so what of it?”
“Well, I should expect the head of a big publishing house to be at least interested in some form of literary expression.”
“You should worry! That's what we hires for. Besides he has a literary passion, too—Walt Mason. He thinks Walt is the greatest poet in the world.”