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 had called the library. Dirk thought she looked very beautiful in that diaphanous stuff, with the pearls. Her heart-shaped face, with its large eyes that slanted a little at the corners; her long slim throat; her dark hair piled high and away from her little ears. He decided not to mention it.

“You look extremely dangerous,” said Paula.

“I am,” replied Dirk, “but it’s hunger that brings this look of the beast to my usually mild Dutch features. Also, why do you call this the library?” Empty shelves gaped from the wall on all sides. The room was meant to hold hundreds of volumes. Perhaps fifty or sixty in all now leaned limply against each, other or lay supine.

Paula laughed. “They do look sort of sparse, don’t they? Theodore bought this place, you know, as is. We’ve books enough in town, of course. But I don’t read much out here. And Theodore!—I don’t believe he ever in his life read anything but detective stories and the newspapers.”

Dirk told himself that Paula had known her husband would not be home until ten and had deliberately planned a tête-à-tête meal. He would not, therefore, confess himself a little nettled when Paula said, “I’ve asked the Emerys in for dinner; and we'll have a game of bridge afterward. Phil Emery, you know, the Third. He used to have it on his visiting card, like royalty.”

The Emerys were drygoods; had been drygoods for sixty years; were accounted Chicago aristocracy;