They made their way through a thronged corridor towards the street, and Miriam felt a proprietary pride in her companion, whose present restraint was as instinctively in keeping with her tailored costume, unostentatious fur, and defiant little hat, as her old flamboyance had been with her khaki breeches and willow switch.
“Since I’ve begun to spend money,” Louise reflected, “I’ve been more and more oppressed by the unfairness of my having access to so much,—though of course it’s nothing compared to what one sees flung about in this bedlam. But all these exaggerated refinements, and people taking notice,—while it excites me, I don’t honestly care for it. There’s something as uncomfortable about it as there would be about ‘boughten’ teeth. Sartorial hysteria; the rash known as civilization; I keep saying phrases like that to myself. . . . After about the fifth time I think I’d bite that beauty woman. I like my face too well to have it rubbed out once a week!”
They turned into Fifth Avenue and joined the hordes let loose at this transition hour of the day. Against the grey buildings women were as bright as flowers, fulfilling, as Miriam reflected, the decorative function that trees fulfil on European boulevards.
“I had a cheque from Keble to-day,” Louise continued. “As if we hadn’t heaps already! It came in a charming letter. Keble in his letters is much more human than he is in the flesh. If I stayed away long enough I might forget that and fall romantically in love with him all over again. Which would be tragic. . . . He says he’s happy, poor lamb, to know that I’m beginning to take an interest in life! But I wish he’d be candid and say he’s miserable. Then I’d know what to do. When he so obstinately pretends to be happy and isn’t, I’m lost. Miriam, look at that creature!”
It was a bizarrely clad woman, so thoroughly made over in every detail of appearance that there was scarcely a square inch of her original pattern left: a weird, costly fabrication that attracted the attention of everybody within range of vision or smell.
“Do you know who it is?” asked Miriam, amused at the startled look in her companion’s eyes.
“No, do you? She looks Japanese.”
“Merely East Side. It’s Myra Pelter, the actress we’re to see to-night in ‘Three Blind Mice’.”
Louise yielded to a temptation to turn and stare. “Now there you are, Miriam: the reductio ad absurdum of hectic shopping and beautifying. Isn’t it enough to drive one into a nunnery! I’m glad we’re on our way to the seashore, where there are at least ‘such quantities of sand’ and sky and water.”
Miriam smiled doubtfully, a little wearily. “There will be quantities of transparent stockings and French perfumes, too, my dear.”