“You think it becoming, don't you, Jimmie?”
“Becoming! Why, it's ravishing! It's irresistible! Do you mean to say that you got all that, gloves and shoes and everything, out of a five-pound note?”
She nodded.
“Good Lord!” said Jimmie in astonishment.
In this manner came realisation of the fact that the tiny child he had undressed and put to sleep in his own bed ten years before had grown into a woman. The shock brought back some of the old perplexities, and created for a short while an odd shyness in his dealings with her. He treated her deferentially, regarded apologetically the mean viands on which he forced this fresh-winged goddess to dine, went out and wasted his money on adornments befitting her rank, and behaved with such pathetic foolishness that Aline, crying and laughing, threatened to run away and earn her living as a nursery-maid if he did not amend his conduct. Whereupon there was a very touching scene, and Jimmie's undertaking to revert to his previous brutality put their relations once more on a sound basis; but all the same there stole into Jimmie's environment a subtle grace which the sensitive in him was quick to perceive. Its fragrance revived the tender grace of a departed day, before he had taken Aline—a day that had ended in a woeful flight to Paris, where he had arrived just in time to follow through the streets a poor little funeral procession to a poor little grave-side in the cemetery of Bagneux. Her name was Sidonie Bourdain, and she was a good girl and had loved Jimmie with all her heart.
The tender grace was that of March violets. The essence of a maid's springtide diffused itself through the house, and springtide began to bud again in the man's breast. It was a strange hyperphysical transfusion of quickening sap. His jesting pictured himself as of a sudden grown hoary, the potential father of a full-blown woman, two or three years short of grandfatherdom. But these were words thrown off from the very lightness of a mood, and vanishing like bubbles in the air. Deep down worked the craving of the man still young for love and romance and the sweet message in a woman's eyes. It was a gentle madness—utterly unsuspected by its victim—but a madness such as the god first inflicts upon him whom he desires to drive to love's destruction. In the middle of it all, while Aline and himself were finding a tentative footing on the newly established basis of their relationship, the ironical deity took him by the hand and led him into the cold and queenly presence of Norma Hardacre. .
After that Jimmie fell back into his old ways with Aline, and the Great Frock Episode was closed.