have looked to her like a big transaction.

I spent three days at the great Klein establishment, only going to the
hotel to sleep, and most of the time I forgot to eat. Madame Rene must
have been Madame Courtier's twin sister in youth, and Madame Telliers in
the hat department was the triplet to them both. When women have genius
it breaks out all over them like measles, and they never recover from
it; those women had the confluent kind. But I know that Madame Rene
really approved of me, for when I blushed and asked her if she could
recommend a good beauty doctor she held up her hands and shuddered.

"Never, madame, never _pour vous. Ravissant, charmant_--it is too
foolish. Nevair! _Jamais, jamais de la vie!_" I had to calm her
down, and she bowed over my hand when we parted.

I thought Klein was going to do the same thing or worse when I signed
the cheque which would be enough to provide him with a new motor-car,
but he didn't. He only said politely, "And I am delighted that the
trousseau is perfectly satisfactory to you, madame."

That was an awful shock, and I hope I didn't show it as I murmured
"Perfectly, thank you."

The word "trousseau" can be spoken in a woman's presence for many years
with no effect, but it is an awful shock when she first _really_
hears it. I felt queer all the afternoon as I packed those trunks for
the five o'clock train.

Yes, the word "trousseau" ought to have a definite surname after it
always, and that's why my loyalty dragged poor Mr. Carter out into the
light of my conscience. The thinking of him had a strange effect on me.
I had laid out the dream in dark grey-blue cloth, tailored almost beyond
endurance, to wear in the train going home, and had thrown the old black
silk bag across the chair to give to the hotel maid, but the decision of
the session between conscience and loyalty made me pack the precious
blue wonder and put on once more the black rags of remembrance in a kind
of panic of respect.

I would lots rather have bought poor Mr. Carter the monument I have
been planning for months (to keep up conversation with Aunt Adeline)
than wear that dress again. I felt conscience reprove me once more with
loyalty looking on in disapproval as I buttoned the old thing up for
the last time, because I really ought to have stayed a day longer to
buy that monument, but--to tell the truth I wanted to see Billy so
desperately that his "sleep-place" above my heart hurt as if it might
have