“Oh, but Tom, I’ve been to Paris since you used to know me, and I’ve become very, very wicked. Don’t contradict me, Madge. I’ve got to persuade Tom that I got some benefit out of my year abroad. Yes, Tom, you’ve no idea how broad-minded Paris has made me. Why, if somebody should mention a man’s ‘mistress’ to me now, I wouldn’t shudder and turn pale. I would probably say, ‘Dear me, has he only one?’ That’s what Paris has made of me. I’m brazen, Tom—brazen.”
They reached the house, and there they chattered on till dinner, and through dinner, and after dinner in Tom’s living room—Felix playing a silent part, and inwardly contemptuous of Gloria’s assumed sophistication. Gloria made a few attempts to draw him into the conversation, but these being resisted, she devoted herself to Tom. Growing confidential, she told him the newest fashions in French lingerie—Madge protesting only slightly, for after all, wasn’t Tom her cousin? and Felix didn’t count. “They’re still wearing muslin over here,” said Gloria, “while we, Tom dear, come from Paris intimately attired in georgette and chiffon—if you know what that means. All the difference in the world, I can assure you! One’s Puritanism goes when one puts on chiffon next to one’s skin. And think, Tom, I never dreamed, all my poor wasted life in Iowa, that nightgowns could be anything but white muslin. Well, you should see the lovely nighties that Madge and I brought home. You’d never guess the colour.... Lavender! Why, the social circles of Port Royal are rocking with it! A blow, Tom, at the very foundations of middle-class morality. Lavender nighties!”
“I do think,” Tom said, “that what people wear makes a difference in their attitude toward life.”
“Oh, I can feel the difference already. My Presbyterian conscience shrivelled up and perished at the touch of that pagan garment. My whole attitude toward life has changed.”
Felix shrugged his shoulders by way of expressing his unbelief in the paganism of lavender nightgowns.
“What are they writing in Paris now?” Tom asked.
“Well, Tom, I admit I was surprised at first. I never dreamed that even the French could be so—French. But I got used to it. I like it now. Even Madge likes it. She makes me translate the wickedest passages for her.”
“I don’t any such thing,” Madge objected.
“What is there so wicked in those passages?” asked Felix, speaking for almost the first time.
Gloria considered him for a moment before replying. “Nothing really wicked at all,” she said. “Wicked only according to our stupid Anglo-Saxon notions. Simply frank, that’s all.”