He clothed her with praise and encouragement, threw a mantle of
crimson velvet about her. And she crimsoned with pride, and her
hard, thin lips velveted with beauty.
She responded so heartily that he was enabled to sell her a gown
of very sumptuous mode, its colors laid on as with the long sweeps
of a Sargent's brush. A good deal of flesh was not left to the
imagination; as in a Sargent painting, the throat, shoulders, and
arms were part of the color scheme. It was a gown to stride in,
to stand still in, in an attitude of heroic repose, or to recline
in with a Parthenonian grandeur.
This gown did not fit her perfectly, just as it came from Paris, but
it revealed its possibilities and restored her shaken self-confidence
immeasurably. If women--or their husbands--could afford it, they
would find perhaps more consolation, restoration, and exaltation at
the dressmakers' than at--it would be sacrilege to say where.
By the time Charity's new gown was ready for the last fitting Charity
had lost her start, and when Dutilh went into the room where she had
dressed he was aghast at the difference. On the first day the gown
had thrilled her to a collaboration with it. Now she hardly stood
up in it. She drooped with exaggerated awkwardness, shrugged her
shoulders with sarcasm, and made a face of disgust.
Dutilh tried to mask his disappointment with anger. When Charity
groaned, "Aren't we awful--this dress and I?" he retorted: "You are,
but don't blame the gown.
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