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 “I think you’re a nice young man.”

That was terrible. “But I don’t want you to think I’m a nice young man. I want you to like me—a lot. Tell me, what haven't I got that you think I ought to have? Why do you put me off so many times? I never feel that I’m really near you. What is it I lack?” He was abject.

“Well, if you’re asking for it. I do demand of the people I see often that they possess at least a splash of splendour in their makeup. Some people are nine tenths splendour and one tenth tawdriness, like Gene Meran. And some are nine tenths tawdriness and one tenth splendour, like Sam Huebch. But some people are all just a nice even pink without a single patch of royal purple.”

“And that’s me, h’m?”

He was horribly disappointed, hurt, wretched. But a little angry, too. His pride. Why, he was Dirk DeJong, the most successful of Chicago’s younger men; the most promising; the most popular. After all, what did she do but paint commercial pictures for fifteen hundred dollars apiece?

“What happens to the men who fall in love with you? What do they do?”

Dallas stirred her coffee thoughtfully. “They usually tell me about it.”

“And then what?”

“Then they seem to feel better and we become great friends.”

“But don’t you ever fall in love with them?” Pretty