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 damned sure of herself. “Don't you ever fall in love with them?”

“I almost always do,” said Dallas.

He plunged. “I could give you a lot of things you haven't got, purple or no purple.”

“I’m going to France in April. Paris.”

“What d’you mean! Paris. What for?”

“Study. I want to do portraits. Oils.”

He was terrified. “Can’t you do them here?”

“Oh, no. Not what I need. I have been studying here. I’ve been taking life-work three nights a week at the Art Institute, just to keep my hand in.”

“So that’s where you are, evenings.” He was strangely relieved. “Let me go with you some time, will you?” Anything. Anything.

She took him with her one evening, steering him successfully past the stern Irishman who guarded the entrance to the basement classrooms; to her locker, got into her smock, grabbed her brushes. She rushed down the hall. “Don’t talk,” she cautioned him. “It bothers them. I wonder what they’d think of my shop.” She turned into a small, cruelly bright, breathlessly hot little room, its walls whitewashed. Every inch of the floor space was covered with easels. Before them stood men and women, brushes in hand, intent. Dallas went directly to her place, fell to work at once. Dirk blinked in the strong light. He glanced at the dais toward which they were all gazing from time to time as they worked. On it lay a nude woman.