As I sat there on an ottoman and heard my grandmother, who was unperturbed by the fact that he listened to her with his hat on and whistled a little tune to himself, inquire of him in an artificial tone of voice, “So what are your … charges? Goodness me, much too much for my slender means!,” I tried to shrink as far as possible into myself, to flee on the wings of eternal verities, to leave nothing of myself, nothing live, on the surface of my body—desensitized like the body of an animal which by inhibition feigns death when wounded—so as not to suffer too much pain in a place where my total lack of habit was made all the more agonizing by the sight of people who seemed to be in their element, an elegant lady for whom the manager showed his respect by freely fondling the little dog that followed her about, a young dandy who came strolling in wearing a hat with a feather and asking whether there was “Any post?,” people for whom climbing the imitation-marble stairs meant they were almost home.