She had seemed not wholly negligible in the salmon-pink dancing frock, though of course the blonde curls had not been true.
Then the days passed until eating merely at a drug-store lunch counter became not the only matter of concern.

There was the item of room rent.
Mrs.Patterson, the Los Angeles society woman, had, upon the occasion of their first interview, made it all too clear that the money, trifling though it must seem for a well-furnished room with the privilege of electric iron in the kitchen, must be paid each week in advance.
Strictly in advance.

Her eye had held a cold light as she dwelt upon this.
There had been times lately when, upon his tree bench, he would try to dramatize Mrs.Patterson as a woman with a soft heart under that polished society exterior, chilled by daily contact with other society people at the Iowa or Kansas or other society picnics, yet ready to melt at the true human touch.

But he had never quite succeeded in this bit of character work.

Something told him that she was cold all through, a society woman without a flaw in her armour.