As I couldn’t help gazing at her, I felt a comradely hand on my shoulder.
“Hypatia of Alexandria,” Attaboy said admiringly. “No one knows what she looked like, of course, so I described her for the artist. The result is breathtaking, don’t you think?”
“Amazing” was all I could say.
He bade me sit, at his left hand as I expected, and his uniformed wait staff began to serve immediately.
He savored and swallowed a mouthful of Oysters Rockefeller before he spoke again. “Do you know about Hypatia?”
“The last Greek philosopher before the Dark Ages,” I replied, marshaling brain cells not exercised since prep school.
His wan smile told me he was amused at my ignorance. “The insufficiency of your knowledge is not the fault of your Exeter education,” he said, “but because the system that produ
