"No," she interrupted, bitterly disappointed. "No. It was only the candle-light." She took a deep breath. Her smile was no longer a private matter between them. "Please forget everything I said. I thought you--" She broke off. "You thought I what?" Lennox asked sharply. He was deeply hurt by her abrupt change. "It doesn't matter." "It matters to me." "Please don't cross-examine me," Gabby said gently. "I made fool of myself, that's all." "I think you're trying to make a fool of me." "No. It's all right. I'm the idiot, not you. What do you write, Mr. Lennox?" "I write better scenes than this, Miss Valentine. My characters don't play games." "Neither do I." "Then what the hell happened?" "Nothing happened. That's why I'm an idiot." Lennox was furious, and, consequently, icy and sardonic. He imagined that this was an impudent young society girl, willful and cavalier, who had taken it into her head to make an ass of him. He couldn't have been more wrong. Gabrielle Valentine was a unique creature. You meet people like that occasionally, and if you're not too cynical you treasure them ... beautiful beings who've been loved and adored from birth and have grown up unspoiled and trusting, completely honest and without guile. This is rare because beauty is more often a curse for a woman and usually sickens her unless she turns it into her profession. No plain girl will believe this, but it's true. Gabby had received affection all her life and gave it as freely. She was not brilliant, which was just as well. No one really likes brilliant people. She was a girl of average intelligence who had grown up in a world which she was able to treat with the disarming confidence of a child. Half the world treated her with the tenderness reserved for children. The cynical half could not abide her transparent honesty. She was twenty-eight. Her father had been an old-line Socialist and had worked with Eugene Debs. He had come from a French Colonial family which had lived in Indo-China for generations and, I suspect, probably intermarried with natives. Certainly Gabby seemed to support the legend that women of mixed French and Oriental blood are the loveliest in the world. Her mother was still living and was a very smart couturiere. Gabby didn't see much of her. She was too busy making her own affectionate way in the world. She had trained, of all things, as an architect, and worked as a free-lance draftsman. Drafting pays well and Gabby was able to afford her own apartment in one of the better Village studio buildings. She was political-minded, an inheritance from her father no doubt, and was an invaluable asset in fund-raising campaigns. She had once gone down to Wall Street and bearded a Republican financier in his den for a contribution to the Democratic party. Or maybe it was a Democrat for the Republican party. I forget which, not being political-minded myself. The point of the story is that she got the money.