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 They went to the Blackstone. The head waiter knew him. “Good evening, Mr. DeJong.” Dirk was secretly gratified. Then, with a shock, he realized that the head waiter was grinning at Dallas and Dallas was grinning at the head waiter. “Hello, André,” said Dallas.

“Good evening, Miss O’Mara.” The text of his greeting was correct and befitting the head waiter of the French room at the Blackstone. But his voice was lyric and his eyes glowed. His manner of seating her at a table was an enthronement.

At the look in Dirk’s eyes, “I met him in the army,” Dallas explained, “when I was in France. He’s a grand lad.”

“Were you in—what did you do in France?”

“Oh, odd jobs.”

Her dinner gown was very smart, but the pink ribbon strap of an under-garment showed untidily at one side. Her silk brassiere, probably. Paula would have but then, a thing like that was impossible in Paula’s perfection of toilette. He loved the way the gown cut sharply away at the shoulder to show her firm white arms. It was dull gold, the colour of her hair. This was one Dallas. There were a dozen—a hundred. Yet she was always the same. You never knew whether you were going to meet the gamin of the rumpled smock and the smudged face or the beauty of the little fur jacket. Sometimes Dirk thought she looked like a Swede hired girl with those high cheek bones of hers and her deep-set eyes and