middle-class love story one finds in the pages of our "better" women's magazines — nor did I want particularly to help disprove the myth of the Feminine Mystique.

Eventually she brought the conversation around to just that particu- lar topic — and used it as a springboard for her explanation of the type person she wanted as a secretary. I would probably have passed out from shock when she went into that had I not been recovering from another shock which cushioned the second blow. As a summing-up of her self-delivered tirade against the mystique idea was the revelation that she was none other than a writer who had been receiving more and more publicity lately for some well-written material and a book that couldn't have been written by a woman. At least, I didn't think so; I was actually shaking my head in dis-belief when she stopped her long discourse to ask me a question.

"Do you know what I'm looking for?" she asked. I was truthfully ignorant; I was still having trouble adjusting to the discovery of her identity. "Let me explain a few things to you," she went on. "You have been shaking your head in amazement at my pen-name for the past several minutes. Not a half-hour ago, you even waxed eloquent about the "brilliant style" and the "deep insight" of this "great author.” Yet you, like everyone else, shakes their head in amazement when they find out that a woman wrote it! Do you know I went to several different publishers time and again with those manuscripts and every one gave me the brushoff. I eventually got the idea and I began submitting them by mail under a different name a masculine name; and I struck pay- dirt! I hadn't changed a single word except the name on the cover! What do you have to say to that?"

—

I inclined my head in regret; there was actually nothing I could say. Of course, I suppose it was a rhetorical question; surely she realized that I had no voice in the matter whatever.

"I need help right now," she said then. "A very special kind of help. I need not only the aid of a secretary but I need . . ." her voice trailed off as she looked at me very thoughtfully. I suddenly felt very warm and even a little foolish sitting there.

"Tell me · can you manage to NO! let me put that another way. Are you willing to apprentice yourself to someone to delay your own aspirations sufficiently to actually be of some assistance to another writer? You see, I have a reason for not simply hiring a secretary as such, for I don't want the kind of drudge who would be able to type up manuscripts at seventy or a hundred words per minute. Nor do I

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