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 She held out her hand. Tommy took it in a desultory way and hardly looked after her as she left the office. She felt slightly depressed. She didn’t care about Tommy but she didn’t like to think that she had lost a certain hold on him.

As Dorothy passed through the reception room she saw a small, plump but alluring girl with unusually black bobbed hair which forced itself out in neat waves from under an attractive red hat. She heard the switchboard impresario tell the girl that Mr. Borge would see her now, second door to the right, where it says “Press Department.”

Dorothy was abstracted as she followed her mother to the elevators. She tried to adjust mentally her conception of Tommy and her relationship to him. Tommy had been reputed clever at college some four years ago. Arnold: at one time had hailed Tommy as a remarkably brilliant youth. Then Arnold’s opinion seemed to change. He regarded Tommy as bright but sloppy and conceited. Gradually the references to Tommy’s sloppiness had dis- appeared in favor of reflections on Tommy’s ego. Dorothy wondered whether she had not always looked on Tommy through Arnold’s eyes. Yet Tommy had been attentive to her. Tommy was not wealthy, but his family was considered well-to-do. He had sufficient money for the usual routine of entertainment, although he had never taken her to some of the more expensive dancing emporia. He was pleasant. He tried to do things for her. She never, she admitted, had shown much gratitude for his efforts. Tommy, she reflected, had really given her a start by referring her to Fleming. Possibly he had even mentioned her to Maxwell.

But why should she think so much of Tommy? She had long since formed her estimate of him—a bright,