Fanny tried--and successfully--not to show the jolt her mind
had received as she turned to look at the picture to which
his finger pointed. She got up and strolled over to it, and
she was glad her suit fitted and hung as it did in the back.

"I don't like it particularly. I like it less than any
other etching you have here." The walls were hung with
them. "Of course you understand I know nothing about
them. But it's too flowery, isn't it, to be good? Too many
lines. Like a writer who spoils his effect by using too
many words."

Fenger came over and stood beside her, staring at the black
and white and gray thing in its frame. "I felt that way,
too." He stared down at her, then. "Jew?" he asked.

A breathless instant. "No," said Fanny Brandeis.

Michael Fenger smiled for the first time. Fanny Brandeis
would have given everything she had, everything she hoped to
be, to be able to take back that monosyllable. She was
gripped with horror at what she had done. She had spoken
almost mechanically. And yet that monosyllable must have
been the fruit of all these months of inward struggle and
thought. "Now I begin to understand you," Fenger went on.
"You've decided to lop off all the excrescences, eh? Well,
I can't say that I blame you. A woman in business is
handicapped enough by the very fact of her sex." He stared
at her again. "Too bad you're so pretty."