* * * * *

But none of that, none of that! She was near the danger line again. She
felt the flesh on her face begin to grow tense, and with her beautiful,
delicate fore-fingers she smoothed her eyebrows into relaxed calm again.

She must keep herself occupied, incessantly; that was the only thing
possible. She had been about to have recourse to the old, old
tranquillizer of women, the setting of fine stitches. She would fix her
mind on that . . . a frill of lace for the net dress . . . which lace? She
lifted the cover from the long, satin-covered box and fingered over the
laces in it, forcing herself to feel the suitable reaction to their
differing physiognomies, to admire the robustness of the
Carrick-Macross, the boldness of design of the Argentan, the complicated
fineness of the English Point. She decided, as harmonizing best with the
temperament of the net dress, on Malines, a strip of this perfect,
first-Napoleon Malines. What an aristocratic lace it was, with its
cobwebby _fond-de-neige_ background and its fourpetaled flowers in the
scrolls. Americans were barbarians indeed that Malines was so little
known; in fact hardly recognized at all. Most Americans would probably
take this priceless creation in her hand for something bought at a
ten-cent store, because of its simplicity and classic reticence of
design. They always wanted, as they would say themselves, something more
to show for their money. Their only idea of "real lace," as they
vulgarly called it (as if anything could be lace that wasn't real), was
that showy, awful Brussels, manufactured for exportation, which was sold
in those terrible tourists' shops in Belgium, with the sprawling
patterns made out of coarse braid and appliqued on, not an organic part
of the life of the design.

She stopped her work for a moment to look more closely at the filmy lace
in her hand, to note if the mesh of the reseau were circular or
hexagonal. She fancied that she was the only American woman of her
acquaintance who knew the difference, who had the least culture in the
matter of lace . . . except Marise, of course, and it was positively worse
for Marise to have been initiated and then turn back to commonness, than
for those other well-meaning, Philistine American women who were at
least innocently ignorant. Having known the exquisite lore of lace, how
could Marise have let it and all the rest of the lore of civilization
drop for these coarse