g Gert's twenty-two inches."

"But honest, Phonzie, take a girl like Gert, even with her figure,
she--Oh, I don't know, there's something about her!"

"She may rub your fur the wrong way, madam, but under all her flip ways
they don't come no finer than Gert."

"No, it ain't that, only she don't always get across. Take Lipton;
she won't even let her show her a gown; she's always calling for Dodo
instead. Sometimes I think the trade takes exceptions to a girl like
Gert, her all decked out in diamonds that--show how--how fly she must
be."

"Gertie Dobriner's the best in the business, just the same, madam. She
ain't stuck on her way of living no more than I am, but she's a model
and she 'ain't got enough of anything else in her to make the world
treat her any different than a model."

"I'm not saying she ain't a good thirty-six, Phonzie."

"I got to hand it to her, madam, when it comes to a lot of things. She
may be a little skylarker, but take it from me, it ain't from choice,
and when she likes you--God! honest, I think that girl would pawn her
soul for you. When I was down with pneumonia--"

"I ain't saying a thing against her."

"She's no saint, maybe, but then God knows I'm not, either, and what I
don't know about her private life don't bother me."

"Oh, I--I know you like her all right."

"Say, I'll bet you any amount if that girl had memory enough to learn
the words of a song or the steps of a dance, she could have landed a
first-row job in any musical show on Broadway. She could do it now, for
that matter. Gad! did you see her to-day showing off that Queen Louise
cloth-of-gold model? Honest, she took my breath away, and I been on the
floor with her twenty years."

"Y-yes."

"Keep down your hips and waist-line, Gert, I always say to her, and you
are good in the business for ten years yet."

"She should worry while the crop of four carats is good."

"Yes, but just the same a girl like her don't know when her luck may
turn. A girl can lose her luck sometimes before she loses her figure."

"Any old time she can lose her luck with you."

"Me!"

"Yes, you!"

Madam Moores bent over the pleats in her napkin. Opposite her, his
cigarette held fastidiously aloft, he regarded her through its haze.

"Well, of all things! So that--that's what you think?"

"I--I know."

"Know what?"

"That she's dead strong for you."

"Sure she is, but what's that got to do with it? That girl's like--well,
she's like