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Some of mycritics seem to think I’m betraying my purposes with a retrogressive step, but I say that sometimes it is time to go back to your beginnings to find the source of your strength. I feel that these have a lot of verity and I find them enormously exciting. Don’t you, Gloria?”
    “Oh, sure,” said Gloria. “Can you scrounge up any more ice, Drummy?”
    Miles went off and made certain there was no more ice. Though Torrigan awed him and the paintings confused him, he was grateful that Torrigan had not complained about the hotel or the accommodations. In fact, Torrigan seemed almost oblivious to his surroundings.
    As he came back toward his apartment he heard Gloria’s voice, sharp with irritation, and then he heard Gambel Torrigan give an explosive yap of anguish. When Miles went in they were standing six feet apart. Gloria was lighting a cigarette. Torrigan stood in peculiar fashion, bent forward at the waist. He straightened himself with effort, grimaced and said, “That was a hell of a thing to do!”
    “You weren’t getting my message, doll.”
    “I’ve got it now,” he said with dignity, and picked up his portfolio and said, “Good night, Gloria. Good night, Mr. Drummond. I am going to bed.” He marched out.
    “What happened?”
    Gloria gave him an odd smile. “I applied a little Reversive Romanticism, Drummy. No ice? Hell. Fix me a warm one then.”
    After her drink, he walked her out to her car where it sat pale in the moonlight. “Gloria, those paintings. I don’t know. I mean I want to preserve an open mind. But … are they any good?”
    “My God, I wouldn’t know. They may be nothing. They may be art for the ages. How can you tell? When he was in his early twenties, a couple of critics got onto him and made a big deal out of him. He had a show in a New York gallery and damn near sold it out for pretty good prices. And that’s the last good thing that happened to him. He teaches around in little schools nobody ever heard of. He sells a painting once in a while. Don’t worry about it, Drummy. He’ll do a snow job on your little people. Good night now.”
    The Jaguar plunged down toward the sleeping city, rumbling through the night. She rang the night bell on the garage until a sleepy attendant appeared to take her car. The lobby of LasRosas was empty. When she was in her small suite she unhooked, unbuttoned, unzipped, unsnapped and let her clothes lie where they fell. She read for about fifteen minutes and then turned out the bed light. She lay in darkness on the edge of sleep and thought of Gam Torrigan, of his sudden look of shock and outrage after he had tried forcibly to embrace her. She grinned a dirty grin and scratched the mound of a soft warm hip, and rolled over into sleep.
    Agnes Partridge Keeley arrived at nine o’clock on Monday morning in a sea-gray air-conditioned Cadillac with California plates. She was a billowing, pillowy woman of fifty, all pastels and jangle of junk jewelry, full of soft cooings and velvety little cries and exclamations. She had a face like a pudding, small, bitter blue eyes, and coarse, tightly curled hair bleached a poisonous yellow-green. When she had been a miserably shy and thoroughly unattractive child, it was thought she had a pretty talent for drawing. In the past thirty years Agnes Partridge Keeley, hefty virgin, had painted and sold some 8,000 seascapes, landscapes and portraits of children and animals in the $15 to $60 price range. A shrewd and avid businesswoman, she saw to it that there were Agnes Partridge Keeleys in every retail outlet in the Pasadena area where an Indiana tourist might be tempted to buy a genuine original painting by a California artist.
    After Miles had greeted her and made arrangements to have her staggering amount of luggage transported to the room he had set aside for her, he took her on a quick tour of the hotel. “How deliciously quaint!” she kept exclaiming, but at certain areas of the tour she was seen to