Sublime

He flirted a very little, too – oh, so expertly! – and looked slightly disconcerted and then delighted when he found that his gallantries amused instead of confusing me. He would have been even more disconcerted if he’d known that, in a queer sort of way, he was reminding me of Daddy: I hadn’t heard this sort of clever, over-sophisticated chatter s

Someone was coming down the stairs. I could hear the click of high-heeled shoes. I waited, perhaps still in some faint hope that it might be somebody I knew. It wasn’t. It was a young woman, cheap and smart, with that tight-black-sweater-and-skirt smartness made to look very Place Vendôme with ropes of improbable pearls. She was blonde, and chewed

morrow.” She addressed it to Tommy at his club, from which in one short month he would have to resign, unless