““As far as he was concerned, all women wanted all men. And vice versa. What stood in the way between a man and a woman at Cafe Algiers was a few chairs, a table, maybe a door--material distance. All a man needed was the will and above all the patience to wait out a woman's scruples or help her brush them aside. As in a game of penny poker, he explained, all that matters was simply the will to keep raising the pot by a single penny each time; a single penny, not two; a single penny was easy, you wouldn't even feel it; but you had to wait for her to raise you by a penny as well, which is when you'd raise her by another, she by yet another, and so on. Seduction was not pushing people into doing things they did not wish to do. Seduction was just keeping the pennies coming.””
![“[Mr. Jones] was uncommonly bad at seduction if he though talk of common capital and incorporation would do the trick, but she could think of no other reason he would lavish her with such time and care. Except the impossible one: No motive but to help her. Such purity didn’t exist, though. If it…” quote by Alison Atlee](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/bda/alison-atlee-80902_seduction_mr-jones-was-uncommonly-bad-at-seduction_1850342.jpg)
