ould I resist? I wanted to see how I felt, how I appeared."

"The veritable curiosity of a Japanese woman getting her first
foreign gown!"

"Thank you! That is another excuse."

"And it certainly looks very well," Jack declared.

"Do you think so?" Mary flushed slightly. She could not help being
pleased. "After six years, could I drop back into the old chrysalis
naturally, without awkwardness? Did I still know how to wear a fine
gown?"--and the gift for it, as anyone could see, was born in her as
surely as certain gifts were born in Jack. "But," she added, severely, "I
have only two--just two! And the cost of them! It will take the whole
orange crop!"

Just two, when she ought to have twenty! When he would have liked to put
all the Paris models in the store in a wagon and, himself driving,
deliver them at her door!

"Having succumbed to temptation, I enjoy it out of sheer respect to
the orange crop," Mary said; "and yes, because I like beautiful
gowns; wickedly, truly like them! And I like the Avenue, just as I
like the desert."

And all that she liked he could give her! And all that he could give she
had stubbornly refused!

The liveliness of her expression, the many shades of meaning that she
could set capering with a glance, were now as the personal reflection of
the day and the scene. Their gait was a sauntering one. They went as far
as the Park and started back, as if all the time of the desert were
theirs. They stopped to look into the windows of shops of every kind,
from antiques to millinery. When he saw a hat which he declared, after
deliberate, critical appraisement, would surely become her, she asked
boldly if it were better than the one she wore.

"I mean an extra hat; that one more hat would have the good fortune of
becoming you!"

"Almost a real contribution to the literature of compliments!" she
answered, unruffled.

He thought, too, that she ought to have a certain necklace in a
jeweler's window.

"To wear over my riding-habit or when I am digging in the flower beds?"
she inquired.

When they passed a display of luxuries for masculine adornment, she found
a further retort in suggesting that he ought to have a certain giddy
fancy waistcoat. He complimented her on her taste, bought the waistcoat
and, going to the rear of the shop, returned wearing it with a
momentarily appreciated show of jaunty swagger.

"Why be on the Avenue and not buy?" he queried, enthusing with a new
idea.

Jim