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 “There you are. Ive got the force, but he’s got the money.”

“You can have both.” She was leaning forward. Her eyes were bright, enormous. Her hands—those thin dark hot hands—were twisted in her lap. He looked at her quietly. Suddenly there were tears in her eyes. “Don’t look at me that way, Dirk.” She huddled back in her chair, limp. She looked a little haggard and older, somehow. “My marriage is a mess, of course. You can see that.”

“You knew it would be, didn’t you?”

“No. Yes. Oh, I don’t know. Anyway, what's the difference, now? I’m not trying to be what they call an Influence in your life. I’m just fond of you—you know that—and I want you to be great and successful. It’s maternal, I suppose.”

“I should think two babies would satisfy that urge.”

“Oh, I can’t get excited about two pink healthy lumps of babies. I love them and all that, but all they need is to have a bottle stuffed into their mouths at proper intervals and to be bathed, and dressed and aired and slept. It’s a mechanical routine and about as exciting as a treadmill. I can’t go round being maternal and beating my breast over two nice firm lumps of flesh.”

“Just what do you want me to do, Paula?”

She was eager again, vitally concerned in him. “It’s all so ridiculous. All these men whose incomes are thirty—forty—sixty—a hundred thousand a year usually haven’t any qualities, really, that the five-thousand-