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 matter if it gets me into all kinds of hot water. You don't mind, do you, Miss Flynn?"

Minnie couldn't answer. She tried to, but she only moistened her lips with her tongue. She didn't know how to talk to a man who was a movie actor. She felt that he was in a social plane above hers, and for the first time in her life she was unhappily self-conscious. She knew that when she spoke she would lower her voice (it was quite shrill and raucous) until its tones matched the quality in his.

She was also abashed by his style, which was so distinctive that it eclipsed all the varied modes of dress in the dance hall. Al Kessler, not wishing to be mistaken for an usher, had not worn his dinner jacket. (He told this to Minnie five minutes after he met her and she would have given anything to have known what a dinner jacket was. Did he mean a "soup and fish"?) Al wore a black suit, cut with such wide lapels that their tips reached above his shoulders. Instead of the conventional three his coat had one button that was set just four inches below his large cravat pin. Minnie had never seen a collar quite so small as Al's, in girth or height. It wasn't much larger than his green tie, which matched the stripes in his socks. Silk socks! They made Minnie ashamed of her cotton lisle. When Al walked, the skirt of his coat flared out. Sometimes it whipped back and revealed a gray silk lining, the monotone of the gray relieved by a broad green stripe. Even at that hour (it was 2 A. M.) his trousers held their crease. He was tall and slender, and rather well-built, looking for all the world like one of the advertisements for ready-made clothing. His features were clean-cut, and when his face was in repose he gave the impression of being rather a handsome, though commonplace type. It was when he laughed, however, that his eyes narrowed with a glint of cunning and his full lips parted over long narrow teeth which