"Since you are here," returned Madame Dépine, indifferently. "You may as well leave your measurements. Then when you decide yourself—Is it not so, monsieur?"
The coiffeur, like a good man of business, eagerly endorsed the suggestion. "Perfectly, madame."
"But if one's head should change!" said Madame Valière, trembling with excitement at the vivid imminence of the visioned wig.
"Souvent femme varie, madame," said the coiffeur. "But it is the inside, not the outside of the head."
"But you said one is not the dome of the Invalides," Madame Valière reminded him.
"He spoke of our old blocks," Madame Dépine intervened hastily. "At our age one changes no more."
Thus persuaded, the "Princess" in her turn denuded herself of her wealth of wig, and Madame Dépine watched with unsmiling satisfaction the stretchings of tape across the ungainly cranium.
"C'est bien," she said. "I return with your fifty francs on the instant."
And having seen her "Princess" safely ensconced in the attic, she rifled the stocking, and returned to the coiffeur.
When she emerged from the shop, the vindictive endurance had vanished from her face, and in its place reigned an angelic exaltation.