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sixteenth century France. My excellent friend safely delivered
up an exhausted and bewildered charge at halfpast seven last
evening, assuring me that her task had been easy, and that her
anticipations of it being the day of her life had been fulfilled.
It had been like dressing a doll, she explained, beaming.
An edifying pastime for an adult woman! I did not utter this
sentiment, for she would rightly have styled me the most
ungrateful of unhung wretches.
Carlotta, then, had followed her about like a perambulatory doll,
upon which she had fitted all the finery she could lay her hands
on. Apparently the atmosphere of the great shops had acted on
Carlotta like an anaesthetic. She had moved in a sensuous dream
of drapery, wherein the choiceimpulse was paralysed. The only
articles upon which, in an unclouded moment, she had set her
heartand that with a sudden passion of covetousnesswere a
pair of red, highheeled shoes and a cheap red parasol.
You have no idea what it means, said Mrs. McMurray, to buy
_everything_ that a woman needs.
I replied that I had a respectful distaste for transcendental
philosophy.
From a paper of pins to an operacloak, she continued.
I'm afraid, dear Mrs. McMurray, an operacloak is not the
superior limit of a woman's needs, said I. I wish it were.
She called me a cynic and went.
This morning Carlotta interrupted me in my work.
Will Seer Marcous come to my room and see my pretty things?
In summer blouse and plain skirt she looked as demure as any
damsel in St. John's Wood. She hung her head a little to one
side. For the moment I felt paternal, and indulgently consented.
Words of man cannot describe the mass of millinery and chiffonery
in that chamber. The spaces that were not piled high with
vesture gave resting spots for cardboard boxes and packingpaper.
Antoinette stood in a corner gazing at the spoil with a smile of
beatific idiocy. I strode through the cardboard boxes which
crackled like bracken, and remained dumb as a fish before these
mysteries. Carlotta tried on hats. She shewed me patent leather
shoes . She exhibited blouses and petticoats until my eyes ached.
She brandished something in her hand.
Tell me if I must wear it (I believe the sophisticated call it
them). Mrs. McMurray says all ladies do. But we never wear
it in Alexandretta, and it hurts.
She clasped herself pathetically and turned her great imploring
eyes on me.
_Il faut souffrir pour etre belle_, I said.
But with the figure of Mademoiselle, it is stupid! cried
Antoinette.
It is outrageous that I should be called upon to express an

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