She thought about that. "Annoyed—then—on the grounds that there's nothing reciprocal about the dance we had."
"But you'd be wrong. After all—I asked you to dinner."
"Because you were curious." She spoke petulantly. "Because you like to find out what makes people tick. Because you're full of half-baked missionary impulses."
"Because you're a damned good-looking dame."
"You think so?"
"Don't fish."
"I'm not! Plenty of people think that I'm a spoiled brat with merely superficial good looks."
"Girls that troll in my waters catch whatever is swimming by that's hungry. Of course you're a spoiled brat—and all good looks are superficial. So I was in a mood. I came down to lunch. I saw a blonde with a book—odd enough, in itself, to be interesting. A hell of a good-looking blonde. And I sat down beside her and she told me the story of her life."
She saw that she was not going to be appeased beyond that deliberately meager degree. She sighed and picked up the tall glass as soon as the waiter deposited it and drank perhaps a third of it, thirstily. Afterward, she tittered. "I'm going to get tight, if I do that again."
"And if you get tight, I'll take you home."