et a group of
fashionably attired women, and he had thought: "There's a bunch of jolly
well-dressed ones." But as the reserved precincts opened out before him
he saw none but fashionably attired women. They were there not in
hundreds but in thousands. They sat in rows on the grand stands; they
jostled each other on the staircases; they thronged the alleys and
swards. The men were negligible beside them. And they were not only
fashionably and very fashionably attired--all their frocks and all their
hats and all their parasols and all their boots were new, glittering,
spick-and-span; were complex and expensive; not one feared the sun. The
conception of what those innumerable chromatic toilettes had cost in the
toil, stitch by stitch, of malodorous workrooms and in the fatigue of
pale, industrious creatures was really formidable. But it could not
detract from the scenic triumph. The scenic triumph dazzlingly justified
itself, and proved beyond any cavilling that earth was a grand,
intoxicating place, and Longchamps under the sun an unequalled paradise
of the senses.... Ah! These women were finished--finished to the least
detail of coiffure, sunshade-handle, hatpin, jewellery, handbag,
bootlace, glove, stocking, _lingerie_. Each was the product of many arts
in co-ordination. Each was of great price. And there were thousands of
them. They were as cheap as periwinkles. George thought: "This is
Paris."

He said aloud:

"Seems to be a fine lot of new clothes knocking about."

Evidently for Lois his tone was too impressed, not sufficiently casual.
She replied in her condescending manner, which he detested:

"My poor George, considering that this is the opening of the spring
season, and the place where all the new spring fashions are tried
out--what did you expect?"

The dolt had not known that he was assisting at a solemnity recognized
as such by experts throughout the clothed world. But Lois knew all those
things. She herself was trying out a new toilette, for which doubtless
Irene Wheeler was partly sponsor. She could hold her own on the terraces
with the rest. She was staggeringly different now from the daughter of
the simple home in the Rue d'Athenes.

The eyes of the splendid women aroused George's antipathy, because he
seemed to detect antipathy in them--not against himself but against the
male in him. These women, though by their glances they largely
mistrusted and despised each other, had the air of having combine