r. Michelson's blond hedge of mustache. "Can I
help it that I got such hypnotizing, mesmerizing ways?"

She smiled beneath her rouge, and wanly. "No, darling," she said.

Across the room Madam Moores regarded them from beside the pile of
sheeny silks, her fingers plucking nervously at the fabrics.

"Hurry up over there, Phonzie. I told her the black lace was on the
way."

Miss Dobriner daubed at her red lips with a lacy fribble of
handkerchief, her voice sotto behind it.

"Don't let her pin you, Phonzie. Have a heart and take me to supper when
I'm blue as indigo."

He leaned to impale a pin upon his lapel. "She's so white to me, Gert,
how can I squirm if she asks me to go over the appointment-book with her
to-night?"

"Tell her your grandmother's dead."

He leaned for another pin. "Stick around down in Seligman's. If I dust
my hat with my handkerchief when I pass, I'm nailed for the evening. If
I can wriggle I'll blow you to Churchey's for supper."

"I--"

"'Sh-h-h-h."

He retreated behind the mauve-colored swinging-door. The two remaining
sibyls, hatted and coated to crane the neck of the passer-by, hurried
arm-in-arm out into the spring evening. An errand girl, who had dropped
her skirt and put up her hair so that the eye of the law might wink at
her stigma of youth, hung the shimmering gowns away for another day's
display. Gertie Dobriner patted her ringed fingers against her mouth to
press back a yawn and trailed across the room, adjusting her hat before
a full-length mirror. In the light from a single electric bulb her hair
showed three colors--yellow gold, green gold, and, toward the roots, the
dark gold of old bronze.

"You can go now, Gert."

"Yes, madam."

Miss Dobriner adjusted a spray of curls. Through the mirror she could
observe the mauve-colored swinging-door.

"Did--did Du Gass order that fish-tail model, madam?"

Madam Moores dallied with her appointment-book. Through the mirror she
could observe the mauve-colored swinging-door.

"Yes, in green."

"If I had her complexion I'd wear sandpaper to match it."

"We haven't all of us got the looks, Gert, that'll get us four-carat
stones to wear down to a twenty-dollar-a-week job."

Miss Dobriner's hand flew to her throat and the gem that gleamed there.
"I--I guess I can buy a stone on time for myself without--without any
insinuations."

"You can wear the stone, all right, Gert, but you can't get past the
insinuations."

"I--I ain'