paris fashions rarely get a good word from men or a bad word from women. the satirists and the clergy and native dressmakers who do not import have delivered tirades

in all languages against them for centuries. they are still giving delight and refreshment from the harems on the bosporus to the cottages on the pacific and the rest

of the way around the world.

the doctors have not seemed to recognize their medicinal value. they recommend equally or even more expensive changes of occupation or of climate which work a gradual

improvement at best in the condition of a failing woman.

but for instant tonic and restorative virtue there is nothing to match the external application of a fresh paris gown. for mild attacks a paris hat may work, and where

only domestic wares are obtainable they sometimes help, if fresh. for desperate cases both hat and gown are indicated.

mustard plasters, electric shocks, strychnia, and other remedies have nothing like the same potency. the effect is instantaneous, and the patient is not only brought

back to life, but stimulated to exert herself to live up to the gown. husbands or guardians should be excluded during the treatment, as the reaction of paris gowns on

male relatives is apt to cause prostration. there need be no fear, however, of overdosing women patients.

as a final test of mortality, the paris gown has been strangely overlooked. holding mirrors before the lips, lifting the hands to the light, and like methods sometimes

fail of certainty. if, however, a paris gown be held in front of the woman in question, and the words “here is the very newest thing from paris just smuggled in” be

spoken in a loud voice, and no sign of an effort to sit up is made, she is dead, and no doubt of it.

bret had decoyed sheila to new york with an elaborate story of having to go on business and hating to go alone. when they arrived she was so weak that bret wanted to

send a red-cap for a wheeled chair to carry her from the train to the taxicab. her pride refused, but her strength barely sufficed the distance.

bret chose the plaza for their hotel, since it required a ride up fifth avenue. his choice was justified by the interest sheila displayed in the shop windows. she

tried to see both sides of the street at once.

she was as excited as a child at coney island. she astounded bret by gifts of observation that would have appalled an indian scout.

after one fleeting glance at a window full of gowns she could describe each of them with a wealth of detail that dazzled him and a technical terminology that left him

in perfect ignorance.

at the hotel she displayed unsuspected vigor. she needed little persuasion to spend the afternoon shopping. he was afraid that she might faint if she went alone, and

he insisted that his own appointments were for the next day.

he followed her on a long scout through a tropical jungle of dressmakers’ shops more brilliant than an orchid forest. sheila clapped her hands in ecstasy after

ecstasy. she insisted on trying things on and did not waver when she had to stand for long periods while the fitters fluttered about her. she promenaded and preened

like a bird-of-paradise at the mating season. she was again the responsive, jocund sheila of their own seaside mating period.

she found one audacious gown and a more audacious hat that suited her and each other without alterations. and since bret urged it, she let him buy them for her to wear

that night at the theater. she made appointments for further fittings next day.

on the way to the hotel she tried to be sober long enough to reproach herself for her various expenditures, but bret said:

“i’d mortgage the factory to the hilt for anything that would bring back that look to your face—and keep it there.”

at the hotel they discussed what play they should see. the ticket agent advised the newest success, “twilight,” but sheila knew that floyd eldon was featured in the

cast and she did not want to cause bret any discomfort. she voted for “breakers ahead” at the odeon, though she knew that dulcie ormerod was in it. dulcie was now

established on broadway, to the delight of the large rural-minded element that exists in every city.

bret bought a box for the sake of the new gown. it took sheila an age to get into it after dinner, but bret told her it was time well spent. when they reached the

theater the first act was well along, and in the otherwise deserted lobby reben was talking to starr coleman concerning a learned interview he was writing for dulcie.

both stared at the sumptuous delilah floating in at the side of bret winfield. they did not recognize either bret or sheila till sheila was almost past them. then they

leaped to attention and called her by name.

all four exchanged greetings with cordiality. time had blurred the old grudges. the admiration in the eyes of both reben and coleman reassured sheila more than all the

compliments they lavished.

reben ended a speech of oriental floweriness with a gracious implication: “you are coming in at the wrong door of the theater. this is the entrance for the sheep. the

artists—ah, if we had you back there now!”

bret whitened and sheila flushed. then they moved on. reben called after her, laughingly:

“i’ve got that contract in the safe yet.”

it was a random shot, but the arrow struck. when the winfields had gone on reben said to coleman:

“she’s still beautiful—she is only now beautiful.”

coleman, whose enthusiasms were exhausted on his typewriting machine, agreed, cautiously: “ye-es, but she’s aged a good deal.”

reben frowned. “so you could say of a rosebud that has bloomed. she was pretty then and clever and sweet, but only a young thing that didn’t know half as much as she

thought she did. now she has loved and suffered and she has had children and seen death maybe, and she has cried a lot in the night. now she is a woman. she has the

tragic mask, and i bet she could act—my god! i know she could act—if that fellow didn’t prevent.”

“fellow” was not the expression he used. reben abhorred bret even more than bret him.

once more sheila was in the odeon, but as one of the laity. when she entered the dark auditorium her eyes rejoiced at the huge, dusty, gold arch of the proscenium

framing the deep brilliant canvas where the figures moved and spoke. it was a finer sight to her than any sunset or seascape or any of the works of mere nature, for

they just happened; these canvas rocks and cloth flowers were made to fit a story. she preferred the human to the divine, and the theatrical to the real.

the play was good, the company worthy of the odeon traditions. even dulcie was not bad, for reben had subtly cast her as herself without telling her so. she played the

phases of her personality that everybody recognized but dulcie. the play was a comedy written by a gentle satirist with a passion for making a portrait of his own

times. the character dulcie enacted was that of a pretty and well-meaning girl of a telephonic past married into a group of snobs, through having fascinated a rich man

with her cheerful voice. dulcie could play innocence and amiability, for she was not intelligent enough to be anything but innocent, even in her vices, and she usually

meant well even when she did her worst.

the author had selected dulcie as his ideal for the r?le, but he had been at a loss how to tell her to play herself without hurting her feelings. she saved him by

asking:

“say, listen, should i play this part plebean or real refined?”

he hastened to answer, “play it real refined.”

and she did. she was delicious to those who understood; and to those who didn’t she was admirable. thus everybody was pleased.

sheila would have enjoyed the r?le as a tour de force, or what she called a stunt, of character-playing. but she was glad that she was not playing it. she felt

immortal longings in her for something less trivial than this quaint social photograph; something more earnest than any light satire.

she did not want to play that play, but she wanted to play—she smoldered with ambition. her eyes reveled in the splendor of the theater, the well-groomed informality

of the audience so eager to be swayed, in the boundless opportunity to feed the hungry people with the art of life. she felt at home. this was her native land. she

breathed it all in with an almost voluptuous sense of well-being.

bret, eying her instead of the stage, caught that contentment in her deep breathing, the alertness of her very nostrils relishing the atmosphere, the vivacity of her

eager eyes. and his heart told him what her heart told her, that this was where she belonged.

he leaned close to her and whispered, “don’t you wish you were up there?”

she heard the little clang of jealousy in his mournful tone, and for his sake she answered, “not in the least.”

he knew that she lied, and why. he loved her for her love of him, but he felt lonely.

dulcie did not send for sheila to come back after the play. broadway stars are busy people, with many suppliants for their time. dulcie had no time for ancient

history.

sheila was glad to be spared, but did not misunderstand the reason. as she walked out with the audience she did not feel the aristocracy of her wealth and her leisure.

she wanted to be back there in her dressing-room, smearing her features into a mess with cold-cream and recovering her every-day face from her workaday mask.

bret and she supped in the grand manner, and sheila had plenty of stares for her beauty. but she could see that nobody knew her. nobody whispered: “that’s sheila

kemble. look! did you see her in her last play?” it was not a mere hunger for notoriety that made her regret anonymity; it was the artist’s legitimate need of

recognition for his work.

she went back to the hotel and took off her fine plumage. it had lost most of its warmth for her. she had not earned it with her own success. it was the gift of a man

who loved her body and soul, but hated her mind.

sheila was very woman, and one paris gown and the prospect of more had lifted her from the depths to the heights. but she was an ambitious woman, and clothes alone

were not enough to sustain her. in her situation they were but gilding on her shackles. the more gorgeously she was robed the more restless she was. she was in the

tragi-comic plight of the man in the doleful song, “all dressed up and no place to go!”

fatigue enveloped her, but it was the fag of idleness that has seen another day go by empty, and views ahead an endless series of empty days like a freight-train.

she tried to comfort bret’s anxiety with boasts of how well she was, but she fell back on the pitiful refrain, “i’m all right.” if she had been all right she would

not have said so; she would not have had to say so.

both lay awake and both pretended to be asleep. in the two small heads lying as motionless on the pillows as melons their brains were busy as ant-hills after a storm.

eventually both fell into that mysterious state called sleep, yet neither brain ceased its civil war.

bret was wakened from a bitter dream of a broken home by sheila’s stifled cry. he spoke to her and she mumbled in her nightmare. he listened keenly and made out the

words:

“bret, bret, don’t leave me. i’ll die if i don’t act. i love you, i love my children. i’ll take them with me. i’ll come home to you. don’t hate me. i love you.

”

her voice sank into incoherence and then into silence, but he could tell by the twitching of her body and the clutching of her fingers that she was still battling

against his prejudice.

he wrapped her in his arms and she woke a little, but only enough to murmur a word of love; then she sank back into sleep like a drowning woman who has slipped from

her rescuer’s grasp.

he fell asleep again, too, but the daybreak wakened him. he opened his eyes and saw sheila standing at the window and gazing at her beloved city, her canaan which she

could see but not possess.

she shook her head despairingly and it reminded him of the old gardener’s farewell to the birch-tree that must die.

she looked so eery there in the mystic dawn; her gown was so fleecy and her body so frail that she seemed almost translucent, already more spirit than flesh. she

seemed like the ghost, the soul of herself departed from the flesh and about to take flight.

bret thought of her as dead. it came to him suddenly with terrifying clarity that she was very near to death; that she could not live long in the prison of his love.

he was the typical american husband who hates tyranny so much that he would rather yield to his wife’s tyranny than subject her to his own. he took no pride in the

thought of sacrificing any one on the altar of his self, and least of all did he want sheila’s bleeding heart laid out there.

the morning seemed to have solved the perplexities of the night; chill and gray, it gave the chill, gray counsel: “she will die if you do not return her where you

found her.” he vowed the high resolve that sheila should be replaced upon the stage.

the pain of this decision was so sharp that when she crept back to bed he did not dare to announce it. he was afraid to speak, so he let her think him asleep.

that morning sheila was ill again, old again, and jaded with discontent. he reminded her of her appointments with the dressmakers, but she said that she would put them

off—or, better yet, she would cancel the orders.

he had their breakfast brought to the room, and he chose the most tempting luxuries he could find on the bill of fare. nothing interested her. he suggested a drive in

the park. she was too tired to get up.

suddenly he looked at his watch, snapped it shut, rose, said that he was late for his conference. she asked him what time it was, and he did not know till he looked at

his watch again. he kissed her and left her, saying that he would lunch down-town.