“Where do you get 'em?” he demanded promptly.
And so they went to one of those shops which have, more than all the others, enshrined Paris in feminine hearts. And never was lingerie selected with more loving care than that which Virginia picked out that afternoon. A tear fell on one particularly lovely robe de nuit—so soothingly soft, so caressingly luxurious, it seemed that surely it might help bring release from the bondage of those crushing years.
As they were leaving they were given two packages. “Just the kimona thing you liked,” he said, “and a trinket or two. Now that we're such good friends, you won't feel like you did this morning.”
“And if I don't want them myself, I might send them to my mother,” Virginia replied, a quiver in her laugh at her own little joke.
He had put her in her cab; he had tried to tell her how much he thanked her; they had said good-bye and the cocher had cracked his whip when he came running after her. “Why, Young Lady,” he called out, “we don't know each other's names.”
She laughed and gave hers. “Mine's William P. Johnson,” he said. “Part French and part Italian. But now look here, Young Lady—or I mean, Miss Clayton. A fellow at the hotel was telling me something last night that made me sick. He said American girls sometimes got awfully up against it here. He said one actually starved last year. Now, I don't like that kind of business. Look here, Young Lady, I want you to promise that if you—you or any of your gang—get up against it you'll cable William P. Johnson, of Cincinnati, Ohio.”
The twilight grey had stolen upon Paris. And there was a mist which the street lights only penetrated a little way—as sometimes one's knowledge of life may only penetrate life a very little way. Her cab stopped by a blockade, she watched the burly back of William P. Johnson disappearing into the mist. The red box which held the yellow opera cloak she could see longer than all else.
“You never can tell,” murmured Virginia. “It just goes to show that you never can tell.”
And whatever it was you never could tell had brought to Virginia's girlish face the tender knowingness of the face of a woman.