Although the Divers¹ were honestly apathetic² to organized fashion, they were nevertheless too acute to abandon its contemporaneous rhythm and beat — Dick’s parties were all concerned with excitement, and a chance breath of fresh night air was the more precious for being experienced in the intervals³ of the excitement.

The party that night moved with the speed of a slapstick comedy. They were twelve, they were sixteen, they were quartets in separate motors bound on a quick Odyssey⁴ over Paris. Everything had been foreseen. People joined them as if by magic, accompanied them as specialists, almost guides, through a phase of the evening, dropped out and were succeeded by other people, so that it appeared as if the freshness of each one had been husbanded for them all day. Rosemary appreciated how different it was from any party in Hollywood, no matter how splendid in scale. There was, among many diversions, the car of the Shah of Persia. Where Dick had commandeered this vehicle, what bribery⁵ was employed, these were facts of irrelevance⁶. Rosemary accepted it as merely a new facet⁷ of the fabulous⁸, which for two years had filled her life. The car had been built on a special chassis⁹ in America. Its wheels were of silver, so was the radiator¹⁰. The inside of the body was inlaid with innumerable brilliants which would be replaced with true gems¹¹ by the court jeweller when the car arrived in Teheran the following week. There was only one real seat in back, because the Shah must ride alone, so they took turns riding in it and sitting on the marten fur that covered the floor.

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