rd of all that was beautiful and exquisite and
desirable.

Ten days before the formal opening of the new twelve-story addition
there was issued from the superintendent's office an order that made a
little flurry among the clerks in the sections devoted to women's dress.
The new store when thrown open would mark an epoch in the retail
drygoods business of the city, the order began. Thousands were to be
spent on perishable decorations alone. The highest type of patronage was
to be catered to. Therefore the women in the lingerie, negligee,
millinery, dress, suit and corset sections were requested to wear during
opening week a modest but modish black one-piece gown that would blend
with the air of elegance which those departments were to maintain.

Ray Willets of the lingerie and negligee sections read her order slip
slowly. Then she reread it. Then she did a mental sum in simple
arithmetic. A childish sum it was. And yet before she got her answer the
solving of it had stamped on her face a certain hard, set, resolute
look.

The store management had chosen Wednesday to be the opening day. By
eight-thirty o'clock Wednesday morning the French lingerie, millinery
and dress sections, with their women clerks garbed in modest but modish
black one-piece gowns, looked like a levee at Buckingham when the court
is in mourning. But the ladies-in-waiting, grouped about here and
there, fell back in respectful silence when there paced down the aisle
the queen royal in the person of Miss Jevne. There is a certain sort of
black gown that is more startling and daring than scarlet. Miss Jevne's
was that style. Fast black you might term it. Miss Jevne was aware of
the flurry and flutter that followed her majestic progress down the
aisle to her own section. She knew that each eye was caught in the tip
of the little dog-eared train that slipped and slunk and wriggled along
the ground, thence up to the soft drapery caught so cunningly just below
the knee, up higher to the marvelously simple sash that swayed with each
step, to the soft folds of black against which rested the very real
diamond and platinum bar pin, up to the lace at her throat, and then
stopping, blinking and staring again gazed fixedly at the string of
pearls that lay about her throat, pearls rosily pink, mistily grey. An
aura of self-satisfaction enveloping her, Miss Jevne disappeared behind
the rose-garlanded portals of the new cream-and-mauve French section.
And there the a