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 choice-impulse was paralysed. The only articles upon which, in an
unclouded moment, she had set her heart--and that with a sudden passion
of covetousness--were a pair of red, high-heeled 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 opera-cloak," she continued.

"I'm afraid, dear Mrs. McMurray, an opera-cloak 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 packing-paper. 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 opinion on
such matters," I said, loftily. And so it was. My assertion of dignity
impressed them.

Then, with characteristic frankness, my young lady shakes out before me
things all frills, embroidery, ribbons, diaphaneity, which the ordinary
man only examines through shop-front windows when a philosophic mood
induces him to speculate on the unfathomable vanity of woman.

"_Les beaux dessous!_" breathed A