Little is known about Elizabeth’s romantic life during these years, other than her decision to break up with a boyfriend when she learned that his father was a coal mine owner. (“I felt they were murderers. He didn’t like me much either.”)56 Another boyfriend may have been the model for the devoted swain in one of Elizabeth’s early short stories, “Yes and No.” Although the narrator describes him as having a “generous, warm nature,” she constantly criticizes him, “from his soul to his clothes.” She thinks of him as her “sweetheart,” yet she never wants to see him when he shows up. Although he is a political science faculty member at the university, “his views seemed to me flat and impersonal.” What keeps her in his thrall is his unshakable affection for her, obliging her to duck his constant proposals of marriage while keeping him on a string. She confesses that his green Chevrolet convertible—in which they drive to taverns where she drinks too much and baits him mercilessly—is one of his major attractions. The kicker, at the end of this short tale, is that she acknowledges “what pleasure we have all received from someone we imagined ‘not quite good enough’ for us.”