Since he seemed to want her to look at the drawings first, she did so, studying them carefully as he passed them to her one by one.
"Well," he said, when she had remained for a long while silent. "What do you think."
She sat up very straight, took the flowers from him and pressed them to her nostrils, looking at him very steadily and with a strange warmth in her eyes—a warmth that made him return her gaze incredulously.
"Yes," she said.
"The flowers aren't too bad, is that what you're trying to tell me? But my drawings—"
"No," she said. "That isn't what I'm trying to tell you. I like both the flowers and the drawings. But these new drawings—well, they're a little on the terrific side, if you don't mind my saying so. And they are saleable. I can guarantee it. I can't do too much to help, because we only need six more drawings this month, and six sales to the Eaton-Lathrup publications will do no more than start you off. But when we've published six, I'm sure you won't have any difficulty in selling the rest to other publications."
"It went against the grain," he said. "I don't quite know why I did it."
She continued to look at him, and the warmth in her eyes told him why, but it took him quite a long while to grasp it.
It was over and they'd released him. Ralph Gilmore still had to appear in court on an illegal firearms possession charge, but that big detective he'd disliked so much at first had assured him that the worst he'd get would be a suspended sentence.