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 was the very last woman to whom such a thing should have happened. For there was nothing about her in the least psychic or spiritual.

She was matter with a capital M, and sex with a capital S; $, rather, since hers was sex without the excuse of passion—sex dealing entirely and shamelessly with bank accounts, high power racing cars, diamonds, and vintage champagnes.

She was lovely, and she drove the hearts and the purses of men as a breath drives a thin sheet of flame.

Only her finger nails gave the mark of the east side tenement (she was a née Maggie Smith) where she had been born and bred; for they were too well kept, too highly polished, too perfectly manicured.

But men did not notice. They seldom looked farther than her hair which was like a sculptured reddish-bronze helmet, her low, smooth, ivory fore-