shades of tan and gray. Mrs.
Sommers selected a black pair and looked at them very long and closely.
She pretended to be examining their texture, which the clerk assured her
was excellent.

"A dollar and ninety-eight cents," she mused aloud. "Well, I'll take
this pair." She handed the girl a five-dollar bill and waited for her
change and for her parcel. What a very small parcel it was! It seemed
lost in the depths of her shabby old shopping-bag.

Mrs. Sommers after that did not move in the direction of the bargain
counter. She took the elevator, which carried her to an upper floor into
the region of the ladies' waiting-rooms. Here, in a retired corner, she
exchanged her cotton stockings for the new silk ones which she had just
bought. She was not going through any acute mental process or reasoning
with herself, nor was she striving to explain to her satisfaction the
motive of her action. She was not thinking at all. She seemed for the
time to be taking a rest from that laborious and fatiguing function and
to have abandoned herself to some mechanical impulse that directed her
actions and freed her of responsibility.

How good was the touch of the raw silk to her flesh! She felt like lying
back in the cushioned chair and reveling for a while in the luxury of
it. She did for a little while. Then she replaced her shoes, rolled the
cotton stockings together and thrust them into her bag. After doing this
she crossed straight over to the shoe department and took her seat to be
fitted.

She was fastidious. The clerk could not make her out; he could not
reconcile her shoes with her stockings, and she was not too easily
pleased. She held back her skirts and turned her feet one way and her
head another way as she glanced down at the polished, pointed-tipped
boots. Her foot and ankle looked very pretty. She could not realize that
they belonged to her and were a part of herself. She wanted an excellent
and stylish fit, she told the young fellow who served her, and she did
not mind the difference of a dollar or two more in the price so long as
she got what she desired.

It was a long time since Mrs. Sommers had been fitted with gloves. On
rare occasions when she had bought a pair they were always "bargains,"
so cheap that it would have been preposterous and unreasonable to have
expected them to be fitted to the hand.

Now she rested her elbow on the cushion of the glove counter, and a
pretty, pleasant young creature, delicate