Oil! by Upton Sinclair

One Saturday the telephone rang, and it was Vernon Roscoe calling Dad. Bunny happened to answer, and heard the jovial voice, "Hello, how's the boy Bolsheviki? Say, Jim Junior, I thought you were coming up to my place! Eventually -- why not now? Annabelle is resting from Pangs of Passion -- she'll be glad to see you. Vee Tracy is there, and Harvey Manning -- quite a bunch of people over Sunday. Sure, I'll be up! You go ahead, your old man will tell you the way."

Bunny told Dad he had accepted the invitation, and Dad said that Mr. Roscoe's domestic arrangements were such that Bunny ought to be told about them in advance. Annabelle Ames, the moving picture actress, was what people called his mistress, but it wasn't really that, because she was devoted to him, and all their friends knew about it, and it was jist the same as being married; only, of course, there was Mrs. Roscoe, who lived in the house in the city, with her four sons. Mrs. Roscoe went in for society and all that, and had tried to drag Verne in, but he wasn't cut out for that life. Sometimes Mrs. Roscoe would go out to the Monastery, as the country place was called, but of course not when Miss Ames was there; Dad said they must have some system to keep from running into each other. Miss Ames had her own house, near to the studio, and the Monastery was a "showplace," where they took their friends over weekends.