She took off her cat’s-eye glasses, left them to dangle over her décolletage. Without them, her eyes seemed palely innocent, undressed, but in a sweet, even childish way. “There’s a real danger here,” she said, and paused to let that sink in. I wasn’t sure if she meant here at this table or in the country at large. “There’s a real danger in the bestowing of gifts upon the hopeless only to inflate the ego of the one who does the bestowing.” She paused, as if to admire the way she’d put this.
