“Do! I could stop here until I changed into a mere figure in a bas-relief—a profile and the back of a lifted hand; and you a classic shape intent upon the flying thread—”
“That’s not fair, Mr. Gilbert. To make remarks upon me when you know I can’t help myself.”
“Don’t you like to have remarks made upon you?”
“Not when I can’t help myself.”
“Why not? I haven’t forbidden you to answer back.”
“But you would, if my answers didn’t suit you. How is it, if you don’t know anything about colors, that you dress in such very tolerable taste?”
“Do I? Mrs. Farrell, don’t take advantage of my helplessness to flatter me! I suppose it’s my tailor’s taste—which I always go against. And then, it’s New York.”
“Yes, New York is well dressed,” sighed Mrs. Farrell. “Oh dear me! The style of some New York girls that I’ve seen! I suppose men can’t feel it as we do.”
“Don’t be so sure of that. We can’t give any but the elementary names of things that a woman has on, but I don’t believe the subtlest effect of a dress is ever lost upon men; and I believe the soul of any man of imagination is as much taken with style in dressing as with beauty. Americans all adore it—perhaps because it’s so characteristic of American women that they seem almost to have invented it. It’s a curious thing—something different from beauty, something different from grace, something more charming than either, and as various as both. I should say it was the expression of personal character, and that American women have more style than any other women because they have more freedom, and utter themselves in dry-goods more fearlessly.”
Mrs. Farrell stopped winding the yarn a moment, and instinctively cast down her eyes over her draperies. He smiled.