lepathically discovered him!

He smiled, raised his hat, presented his card to the mother, and said:
"Excuse me, but I do want to defend myself from that last statement, if
I may. I couldn't help overhearing it."

The mother, a woman of the world, read the name on the card quickly and
smiled, but the daughter's face was a study as she leaned over and
glanced at the card. She turned scarlet and then white.

"Now, do tell me," asked Bok of the daughter, "who 'Ethel' is, so that I
may try at least to prove that I am not what she thinks."

The daughter was completely flustered. For the rest of the journey,
however, the talk was informal; the girl became more at ease, and Bok
ended by dining with the mother and daughter at their hotel that
evening.

But he never found out "Ethel's" other name!

There were curiously amusing sides to a man's editorship of a woman's
magazine!

XXIX. An Excursion into the Feminine Nature

The strangling hold which the Paris couturiers had secured on the
American woman in their absolute dictation as to her fashions in dress,
had interested Edward Bok for some time. As he studied the question, he
was constantly amazed at the audacity with which these French
dressmakers and milliners, often themselves of little taste and scant
morals, cracked the whip, and the docility with which the American woman
blindly and unintelligently danced to their measure. The deeper he went
into the matter, too, the more deceit and misrepresentation did he find
in the situation. It was inconceivable that the American woman should
submit to what was being imposed upon her if she knew the facts. He
determined that she should. The process of Americanization going on
within him decided him to expose the Paris conditions and advocate and
present American-designed fashions for women.

The Journal engaged the best-informed woman in Paris frankly to lay open
the situation to the American women; she proved that the designs sent
over by the so-called Paris arbiters of fashion were never worn by the
Frenchwoman of birth and good taste; that they were especially designed
and specifically intended for "the bizarre American trade," as one
polite Frenchman called it; and that the only women in Paris who wore
these grotesque and often immoderate styles were of the demimonde.

This article was the opening gun of the campaign, and this was quickly
followed by a second equally convincing--both articles being written
fr