men. Her duties as Scriven's private secretary
apparently included the role of a first lady for Cephalon.

Despite this preoccupation an intimate and tense relationship existed
between him and her. Sometimes she would invite him to join her group
and then for one or two brief moments their eyes would meet above the
conversation and her eyes seemed to ask: "What do you think of these
people?" or "How do I look tonight?"

His eyes would answer:

"These people are strangers to me; you know that I'm a bit out of this
world. But you handle them expertly and you are looking wonderful
tonight."

She was tremendously popular, especially with the set of the young
scientists who made the hotel their club. This new generation, born in
the days of the Second World War, was changing the horses of its
feminine ideals in the mid-stream of its youth. The old ideal, the
"problematic woman" who had ruled over and had made life miserable for
three generations of American males, was on its way out. The new ideal
was the woman who would unite beauty and intellect into one fully
integrated, non-problematical personality. The ideal being new, the
feminine type which represented it was rare. Oona in her perfect poise,
in her rare beauty combined with her importance as Scriven's
confidential secretary was the perfect expression of the new desired
type; it was natural that these young men should worship her as "the
woman of the future."

With the hopeless and--in consequence--unselfish love he had for her,
Lee wasn't jealous of her popularity. On the contrary, he was rather
proud of it like a knight-errant who rejoices in the adoration bestowed
upon the lady of his heart. What worried him was a very different
problem: Was Oona really all those others thought she was? Was she
really that "fully integrated", that "non-problematical" personality she
appeared to be?

He couldn't believe it, and the conflict came in because all those
others were so certain that she was. He couldn't get over his first
impression of her. He had met her in that cabin in the sky, the most
synthetic, the most perversely artificial setup one could dream up in
the second half of the 20th century. She had impressed him as something
"out of this world", a goddess, a Diana with a golden helmet for hair,
so radiant as to blind the eyes of mortal men. She was the confidential
secretary of a man of genius, Scriven, one of those rare comets which
fall down upon this earth