Paris, aren't you?"

He held her close to his side, while he showed her what he had chosen;
the pale-pink collars--"You were always gone on pink, weren't you?" he
asked--the silk stockings and the vanity garters. With clumsy fingers
he tried to adjust the hair-band.

"Let me do it," she protested, "if you really want me to wear it."

"Well, don't _you_ want to?" he asked, a little hurt.

"I'd love to, if I may put it on properly. It's sweet."

"It makes you look awf'ly French!"

"Does that improve me?"

"You don't want improving."

He sat down by the dressing-table, while she stood, fixing the
glittering circle round her hair with clever fingers. He kept his hand
on her waist and, leaning forward, looked at her in the glass. She had
a lithe naturalness, a slim strength, which newly arrested his
admiration. Struck by the charm of his own wife, he missed no detail
of her appearance. She had dressed to please herself with a true
woman's delight in _dessous_; and he was quick to notice the
mauve gleam of ribbon shoulder straps under the filmy black of her
bodice, which gave the sombre gown a charming colour-note; her
sleeves, transparent, long, and braceleted round the wrists with black
velvet bands, showed the whole length of her white arms; in her ears
amethyst earrings repeated the note of the mauve ribbons. Her
stockings were silk and her slippers of velvet.

She was as amazing to him as a beautiful stranger.

"It doesn't go with my earrings," she said carelessly when she had
fixed the band, "but it's so pretty, and thank you ever so much."

She turned and showed him; and she showed him, too, the interest she
took in herself, which had caused her to pull out those waves of
fluffy hair over the tops of her ears, from under the hair-band, and
the curls she had pulled from beneath to dance on her forehead.

"Give me a kiss for it," he said, drawing her down.

She kissed him lightly.

"Fancy you the mother of a family!" he remarked, with a look at the
screened corner.

She smiled to herself, and began fingering the other things. "How nice
they are! And silk stockings! They're always welcome."

"But you're wearing them already," he said, with rather a disappointed
glance at her ankles.

"That doesn't matter. If there's one thing you can't glut a woman
with, it's silk stockings."

"Thanks, Mrs. Kerr! I'll remember that when I come home in the small
hours and have to provide a peace offering."

"Come h