d overboard.

You see, one can't be too careful about clothing one's heroine.

I hesitate to describe Sophy Epstein's dress. You won't like it. In the
first place, it was cut too low, front and back, for a shoe clerk in a
downtown loft. It was a black dress, near-princess in style, very tight
as to fit, very short as to skirt, very sleazy as to material. It showed
all the delicate curves of Sophy's under-fed, girlish body, and Sophy
didn't care a bit. Its most objectionable feature was at the throat.
Collarless gowns were in vogue. Sophy's daring shears had gone a snip or
two farther. They had cut a startlingly generous V. To say that the
dress was elbow-sleeved is superfluous. I have said that Sophy clerked
in a downtown loft.

Sophy sold "sample" shoes at two-fifty a pair, and from where you were
standing you thought they looked just like the shoes that were sold in
the regular shops for six. When Sophy sat on one of the low benches at
the feet of some customer, tugging away at a refractory shoe for a
would-be small foot, her shameless little gown exposed more than it
should have. But few of Sophy's customers were shocked. They were
mainly chorus girls and ladies of doubtful complexion in search of cheap
and ultra footgear, and--to use a health term--hardened by exposure.

Have I told you how pretty she was? She was so pretty that you
immediately forgave her the indecency of her pitiful little gown. She
was pretty in a daringly demure fashion, like a wicked little Puritan, or
a poverty-stricken Cleo de Merode, with her smooth brown hair parted in
the middle, drawn severely down over her ears, framing the lovely oval of
her face and ending in a simple coil at the neck. Some serpent's wisdom
had told Sophy to eschew puffs. But I think her prettiness could have
triumphed even over those.

If Sophy's boss had been any other sort of man he would have informed
Sophy, sternly, that black princess effects, cut low, were not au fait in
the shoe-clerk world. But Sophy's boss had a rhombic nose, and no
instep, and the tail of his name had been amputated. He didn't care how
Sophy wore her dresses so long as she sold shoes.

Once the boss had kissed Sophy--not on the mouth, but just where her
shabby gown formed its charming but immodest V. Sophy had slapped him,
of course. But the slap had not set the thing right in her mind. She
could not forget it. It had made her uncomfortable in much the same way
as