The return of the ladies cut off a reply. Janet's natural grace redeemed the hang of a not too well-tailored suit. Cornelia was all aglow over a mandarin coat she had put on. It was a wonderful dark green silk with dull gold embroidery. Her clothes had a remarkable effect of clinging to her contours. "Look at me," her body seemed to call out through its vestments, "did you ever see anything so ravishing?"
Janet walked over to Robert's side and sought forgiveness without asking for it. And he forgave her without saying so. Her soft, flexible, thrilling voice disturbed him sorely, and he wondered whether its sustained riches were as illusory as he judged the mysterious depths of her gray eyes to be.
Meanwhile, Claude was telling Cornelia in all sincerity that she had never looked more enchanting.
"Flatterer!" she said. "To how many girls have you said that today?"
"Facts don't flatter, Cornelia. They simply cry out the truth."
"Lothario, it's all a matter of the science of pinning and the art of dressing. Or rather, of not dressing."
For the hundredth time, she assured Claude and Robert that she never wore corsets or underwear, and didn't believe in these accoutrements.
"What, nothing?" exclaimed Claude, perhaps to see Janet blush.
"We are an art-hating people with ugly ideas," continued Cornelia, unheeding his interruption, "and so we grow ugly, unsightly bodies. That is why modern fashionable dressmaking has but one aim: to conceal deformities. But dresses that conceal women's bad points are sure to conceal their good points, too. A tragic loss! Janet is young and charming; she can stand this loss. I'm on the wrong side of thirty; I can't."
"Are you poking fun at my Brooklyn clothes again?" asked Janet. "If you go on like this, I shall have to ferret out all the secrets of your art, in pure self defence."