and delicate, the wind had blown a fluff of loose
hair, and on this insignificant detail his eye dwelt with rapture.
This woman's face pleased him like music. And as he looked, all his
desires were melted and confounded in a wave of tenderness, caressing
and devotional, the complete surrender of strength to weakness. He
wanted to take her in his arms, and dared not even touch her hand.
There had been no talk of love between them, and she had kept him at a
distance with her air of distinction and superficial refinements. She
seemed to spread a silken barrier between them that exasperated and
entranced him. Some identity in his sensations puzzled him, and as he
looked, with a flash he was in Cardigan Street again, stooping over his
child with a strange sensation in his heart, learning his first lesson
in pity and infinite tenderness. Another moment and he would have taken
her in his arms. Instead of that, he said "I'm putting that line of
patent leather pumps in the catalogue at seven and elevenpence, post
free."

Instantly Clara became attentive.

"You mean those with the buckles and straps? They'll go like hot
cakes!"

"They ought to," said Jonah, dryly. "Post free brings them a shade
below cost price."

"A shade below cost?" said Clara in surprise. "I thought you bought
them at seven and six?"

"So I do," replied Jonah, "but add twelve per cent for working
expenses, an' where's the profit? Packard's manager puts them in the
window at eight an' six, an' wonders why they don't sell. His girls
come straight from the factory and buy them off me. They're the sort I
want--waitresses, dressmakers, shop-hands, bits of girls that go
without their meals to doll themselves up. They want the cheapest they
can get, an' they're always buying."

And at once they plunged into a discussion on the business of the
Silver Shoe. Clara always listened with fascination to the details of
buying and selling. Novelettes left her cold, but the devices to
attract customers, the lines that were sold at a loss for
advertisement, the history of the famous Silver Shoe that Jonah sold in
thousands at a halfpenny a pair profit, astonished her like a
fairy-tale that happened to be real.

One day, while shopping at Jordan's mammoth cash store, her ear had
caught the repeated clink of metal, and turning her head, she stood on
the stairs, thunderstruck. She saw a square room lit with electric
bulbs in broad daylight. It was the t