better than nothing to look forward
to a pleasant evening, and she went back to her novel and her cup of
tea already half reconciled with life.

It rained almost without stopping. At times it poured, which really
does not happen often in much-abused London; but even heavy rain
is not so depressing in spring as it is in winter, and when the
Primadonna raised her eyes from her book and looked out of the big
window, she was not thinking of the dreariness outside but of what
she should wear in the evening. To tell the truth, she did not often
trouble herself much about that matter when she was not going to sing,
and all singers and actresses who habitually play 'costume parts' are
conscious of looking upon stage-dressing and ordinary dressing from
totally different points of view. By far the larger number of them
have their stage clothes made by a theatrical tailor, and only an
occasional eccentric celebrity goes to Worth or Doucet to be dressed
for a 'Juliet,' a 'Tosca,' or a 'Dona Sol.'

Margaret looked at the rain and decided that Logotheti should not find
her in a tea-gown, not because it would look too intimate, but because
tea-gowns suggest weariness, the state of being misunderstood, and a
craving for sympathy. A woman who is going to surrender to fate puts
on a tea-gown, but a well-fitting body indicates strength of character
and virtuous firmness.

I remember a smart elderly Frenchwoman who always bestowed unusual
care on every detail of her dress, visible and invisible, before going
to church. Her niece was in the room one Sunday while she was dressing
for church, and asked why she took so much trouble.

'My dear,' was the answer, 'Satan is everywhere, and one can never
know what may happen.'

Margaret was very fond of warm greys, and fawn tints, and dove colour,
and she had lately got a very pretty dress that was exactly to her
taste, and was made of a newly invented thin material of pure silk,
which had no sheen and cast no reflections of light, and was slightly
elastic, so that it fitted as no ordinary silk or velvet ever could.
Alphonsine called the gown a 'legend,' but a celebrated painter who
had lately seen it said it was an 'Indian twilight,' which might mean
anything, as Paul Griggs explained, because there is no twilight to
speak of in India. The dress-maker who had made it called the colour
'fawn's stomach,' which was less poetical, and the fabric, 'veil of
nun in love,' which showed little respe