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 see, I used to get twenty-five cents apiece for sketching hats for Gage’s.”

She was undeniably attractive. “And now you've arrived. You're successful.”

“Arrived! Heavens, no! I’ve started.”

“Who gets more money than you do for a drawing?”

“Nobody, I suppose.”

“Well, then?”

“Well, then, in another minute I'll be telling you the story of my life.”

She smiled again her slow wide smile; turned to leave. Dirk decided that while most women’s mouths were merely features this girl’s was a decoration.

She was gone. Miss Ethelinda Quinn et al., in the outer office, appraised the costume of Miss Dallas O’ Mara from her made-to-order footgear to her made-in-France millinery and achieved a lightning mental reconstruction of their own costumes. Dirk DeJong in the inner office realized that he had ordered a fifteen-hundred-dollar drawing, sight unseen, and that Paula was going to ask questions about it.

“Make a note, Miss Rawlings, to call Miss O’Mara’s studio on Thursday.”

In the next few days he learned that a surprising lot of people knew a surprisingly good deal about this Dallas O’Mara. She hailed from Texas, hence the absurd name. She was twenty-eight—twenty-five—thirty-two—thirty-six. She was beautiful. She was ugly. She was an orphan. She had worked her way through art school. She had no sense of the value of