g himself about
her. However, to strengthen herself in every way with him was
obviously the wisest effort she could make. So, she must have
a new dress for the next meeting, one which would make him
better pleased to take her out to dinner. True, if she came
in rags, he would not be disturbed--for he had nothing of the
snob in him. But at the same time, if she came dressed like
a woman of his own class, he would be impressed. "He's a
man, if he is a genius," reasoned she.

Vital though the matter was, she calculated that she did not
dare spend more than twenty-five dollars on this toilet. She
must put by some of her forty a week; Brent might give her up
at any time, and she must not be in the position of having to
choose immediately between submitting to the slavery of the
kept woman as Spenser's dependent and submitting to the costly
and dangerous and repulsive freedom of the woman of the
streets. Thus, to lay out twenty-five dollars on a single
costume was a wild extravagance. She thought it over from
every point of view; she decided that she must take the risk.

Late in the afternoon she walked for an hour in Fifth Avenue.
After some hesitation she ventured into the waiting- and
dressing-rooms of several fashionable hotels. She was in
search of ideas for the dress, which must be in the prevailing
fashion. She had far too good sense and good taste to attempt
to be wholly original in dress; she knew that the woman who
understands her business does not try to create a fashion but
uses the changing and capricious fashion as the means to
express a constant and consistent style of her own. She
appreciated her limitations in such matters--how far she as
yet was from the knowledge necessary to forming a permanent
and self-expressive style. She was prepared to be most
cautious in giving play to an individual taste so imperfectly
educated as hers had necessarily been.

She felt that she had the natural instinct for the best and
could recognize it on sight--an instinct without which no one
can go a step forward in any of the arts. She had long since
learned to discriminate among the vast masses of offering,
most of them tasteless or commonplace, to select the rare and
few things that have merit. Thus, she had always stood out in
the tawdrily or drearily or fussily dressed throngs, had been
a pleasure to the eyes even of those who did not know why they
were pleased. On that momentous day, she finally saw a