BY THE TIME I got to Constance’s place and was making up my excuses, it was past eleven, and when I rang the bell, there was no answer. I sat on the stoop, waiting, but decided that was an embarrassing position to be found in, so I walked across the street, sat on the curb against the wheel of a parked car, and kept watch down Sycamore Drive. In an hour, I saw her coming, prancing on those dancer’s legs, and with her a man, older than I and bulky around the middle. He was doing the talking, she was listening diffidently, nodding her head as if to say, “Yes, yes, I see what you mean, of course, that’s very interesting!” I figured that her companion was some species of intellectual and that he was directing his persuasion pressure to where she was weakest, her uncertain schooling. What powers these intellectuals have over first-blooming young women, I thought, as they passed into the dark courtyard, he clattering at her and she looking up at him with trust. Turn your back on a delicious girl in Hollywood, and before you know it, some high-dome is at her with the solution for her troubled life. It’s not the good-looking young athletes you have to watch out for but these idea-peddlers, who get in there by filling the gaps where the young woman most needs reassurance.