When Alice Sheffield dropped into the stream of women going through the doors of Lord & Taylor’s and felt the close smell of stuffs in her nostrils something went click in her head. First she went to the glovecounter. The girl was very young and had long curved black lashes and a pretty smile; they talked of permanent waves while Alice tried on gray kids, white kids with a little fringe like a gauntlet. Before she tried it on, the girl deftly powdered the inside of each glove out of a longnecked wooden shaker. Alice ordered six pairs.
“Yes, Mrs. Roy Sheffield.... Yes I have a charge account,
here’s my card.... I’ll be having quite a lot of things sent.” And to herself she said all the while: “Ridiculous how I’ve been going round in rags all winter.... When the bill comes Roy’ll have to find some way of paying it that’s all. Time he stopped mooning round anyway. I’ve paid enough bills for him in my time, God knows.” Then she started looking at fleshcolored silk stockings. She left the store her head still in a whirl of long vistas of counters in a violet electric haze, of braided embroidery and tassles and nasturtiumtinted silks; she had ordered two summer dresses and an evening wrap.
At Maillard’s she met a tall blond Englishman with a coneshaped head and pointed wisps of towcolored mustaches under his long nose.
“Oh Buck I’m having the grandest time. I’ve been going berserk in Lord & Taylor’s. Do you know that it must be a year and a half since I’ve bought any clothes?”
“Poor old thing,” he said as he motioned her to a table. “Tell me about it.”
She let herself flop into a chair suddenly whimpering, “Oh Buck I’m so tired of it all.... I dont know how much longer I can stand it.”
“Well you cant blame me.... You know what I want you to do....”
“Well suppose I did?”