r a belt, linings and the like, made her total bill
twenty-three dollars and sixty-seven cents. She returned home
content and studied "Cavalleria" until her purchases arrived.

Spenser was out now, was working all day and in the evenings
at Sperry's office high up in the Times Building. So, Susan
had freedom for her dressmaking operations. To get them off
her mind that she might work uninterruptedly at learning
_Lola's_ part in "Cavalleria," she toiled all Saturday, far into
Sunday morning, was astir before Spenser waked, finished the
dress soon after breakfast and the hat by the middle of the
afternoon. When Spenser returned from Sperry's office to take
her to dinner, she was arrayed. For the first time he saw her
in fashionable attire and it was really fashionable, for
despite all her disadvantages she, who had real and rare
capacity for learning, had educated herself well in the chief
business of woman the man-catcher in her years in New York.

He stood rooted to the threshold. It would have justified a
vanity less vigorous than Susan or any other normal human
being possessed, to excite such a look as was in his eyes. He
drew a long breath by way of breaking the spell over speech.

"You are _beautiful!_" he exclaimed.

And his eyes traveled from the bewitching hat, set upon her
head coquettishly yet without audacity, to the soft crepe
dress, its round collar showing her perfect throat, its
graceful lines subtly revealing her alluring figure, to the
feet that men always admired, whatever else of beauty or charm
they might fail to realize.

"How you have grown!" he ejaculated. Then, "How did you do it?"

"By all but breaking myself."

"It's worth whatever it cost. If I had a dress suit, we'd go
to Sherry's or the Waldorf. I'm willing to go, without the
dress suit."

"No. I've got everything ready for dinner at home."

"Then, why on earth did you dress? To give me a treat?"

"Oh, I hate to go out in a dress I've never worn. And a woman
has to wear a hat a good many times before she knows how."

"What a lot of fuss you women do make about clothes."
"You seem to like it, all the same."

"Of course. But it's a trifle."

"It has got many women a good provider for life. And not
paying attention to dress or not knowing how has made most of
the old maids. Are those things trifles?"

Spenser laughed and shifted his ground without any sense of
having been pressed to do so. "Men are fools whe