“I hope you haven’t neglected your business,” said Miss Gold without enthusiasm.

Max Tack leaned closer, his tone lowered.

“I’d neglect it any day for you.  Listen, little one:  aren’t you going to take dinner with me some evening?”

Max Tack always called a woman “Little one.”  It was part of his business formula.  He was only one of the wholesalers who go to Paris yearly ostensibly to buy models, but really to pay heavy diplomatic court to those hundreds of women buyers who flock to that city in the interests of their firms.  To entertain those buyers who were interested in goods such as he manufactured in America; to win their friendship; to make them feel under obligation at least to inspect his line when they came to New York—­that was Max Tack’s mission in Paris.  He performed it admirably.

“What evening?” he said now.  “How about to-morrow?” Sophy Gold shook her head.  “Wednesday then?  You stick to me and you’ll see Paris.  Thursday?”

“I’m buying my own dinners,” said Sophy Gold.

Max Tack wagged a chiding forefinger at her.

“You little rascal!” No one had ever called Sophy Gold a little rascal before.  “You stingy little rascal!  Won’t give a poor lonesome fellow an evening’s pleasure, eh!  The theatre?  Want to go slumming?”

He was feeling his way now, a trifle puzzled.  Usually he landed a buyer at the first shot.  Of course you had to use tact and discrimination.  Some you took to supper and to the naughty revues.

Occasionally you found a highbrow one who preferred the opera.  Had he not sat through Parsifal the week before?  And nearly died!  Some wanted to begin at Tod Sloan’s bar and work their way up through Montmartre, ending with breakfast at the Pre Catalan.  Those were the greedy ones.  But this one!

“What’s she stalling for—­with that face?” he asked himself.

Sophy Gold was moving toward the lift, the twinkling-eyed Miss Morrissey with her.

“I’m working too hard to play.  Thanks, just the same.  Good-night.”

Max Tack, his face blank, stood staring up at them as the lift began to ascend.

“Trazyem,” said Miss Morrissey grandly to the lift man.

“Third,” replied that linguistic person, unimpressed.

It turned out to be soothingly quiet and cool in Ella Morrissey’s room.  She flicked on the light and turned an admiring glance on Sophy Gold.

“Is that your usual method?”

“I haven’t any method,” Miss Gold seated herself by the window.  “But I’ve worked too hard for this job of mine to risk it by putting myself under obligations to any New York firm.  It simply means that you’ve got to buy their goods.  It isn’t fair to your firm.”

Miss Morrissey was busy with hooks and eyes and strings.  Her utterance was jerky but concise.  At one stage of her disrobing she breathed a great sigh of relief as she flung a heavy garment from her.