"Darling," he said, with every kind of friendliness and good humor and amiable sophistication, "you are an exceedingly beautiful creature. You've probably been told that at least once before if not ten times an evening. You are now hearing it again — but this time from a connoisseur. Nevertheless, ready as I am to swoon before you, the few fragments of sense that I have left will not let me go along with the gag of treating you as an ingenue."
She laughed; and it was something that he registered in her favor, if only because she was probably the only woman in the place who could have unraveled his phraseology enough to know whether to laugh or not.
She said: "Then I won't do?"
"You'll do perfectly," he assured her, "if you'll just take my word for it that I'm strictly in favor of women who are old enough to have had a little experience — and young enough to be interested in a little more. But they also have to be old enough to look at an old tired monument like me and know when I don't want to sit up all night arguing about storks."
It was a delight to watch the play of her shoulders and neck line.
"You're priceless… Would you buy me a drink?"
"I'd love to. I expect to buy the whole joint, a small hunk at a time. If I have a drink too, it should be worth two tables and a dozen chairs."
He signaled the square-faced bartender.
"And a cigarette?" she said.
He shook one out of his pack.