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ARCUS BELDEN did not have a very high opinion of women. The Italian fruit-dealer at the corner polished his apples, and laid the best ones on the top of the basket. Women were a lot like them, Marcus said. Underneath their selected top layer of sometimes really glorious charms the size of soul ran small, green and undeveloped. It was easy enough to see the powder on their faces, the polish on their nails, the rouge on their lips, but Marcus had never been able to discover anything very solid or durable underneath this veneer.

Feeling as he did about the sex, it was one of the jokes of fate that he had had four daughters born to him, and not a son among them. It was a sore point with him. He scarcely ever mentioned his family to his business associates. They never met. He felt that there was some sort of 1