Lifted Masks | Page 4

had been suddenly loosened from his spine, cast one look at the Frenchwoman--then fled, followed by her groaning compatriot.
"I didn't mean you to act like that!" she stormed.
"Why, I did just what you told me to! Seemed to me I was following directions to the letter. Don't think for a minute _I'm_ going to bring discredit on the American nation! Not a bad scheme--taking out my watch that way, was it?"
"Oh, beautiful scheme. I presume you notice, however, that we have no lace."
They walked half a block in silence. "Now I'll take you to another shop," she then volunteered, in a turning the other cheek fashion, "and here please do nothing at all. Please just--sit."
"Sort of as if I was feeble-minded, eh?"
"Oh, don't try to look feeble-minded," she begged, alarmed at seeming to suggest any more parts; "just sit there--as if you were thinking of something very far away."
"Say, Young Lady, look here; this is very nice, being put on to the tricks of the trade, but the money end of it isn't cutting much ice, and isn't there any way you can just buy things--the way you do in Cincinnati? Can't you get their stuff without making a comic opera out of it?"
"No, you can't," spoke relentless Virginia; "not unless you want them to laugh and say 'Aren't Americans fools?' the minute the door is shut."
"Fools--eh? I'll show them a thing or two!"
"Oh, please show them nothing here! Please just--sit."
While employing her wiles to get for three hundred and fifty francs a yoke and scarf aggregating four hundred, she chanced to look at her American friend. Then she walked rapidly to the rear of the shop, buried her face in her handkerchief, and seemed making heroic efforts to sneeze. Once more he was following directions to the letter. Chin resting on hands, hands resting on stick, the huge American had taken on the beatific expression of a seventeen-year-old girl thinking of something "very far away." Virginia was long in mastering the sneeze.
On the sidewalk she presented him with the package of lace and also with what she regarded the proper thing in the way of farewell speech. She supposed it was hard for a man to go shopping alone; she could see how hard it would be for her own father; indeed it was seeing how difficult it would be for her father had impelled her to go with him, a stranger. She trusted his wife would like the lace; she thought it very nice, and a bargain. She was glad to have been of service to a fellow countryman who seemed in so difficult a position.
But he did not look as impressed as one to whom a farewell speech was being made should look. In fact, he did not seem to be hearing it. Once more, and in earnest this time, he appeared to be thinking of something very far away. Then all at once he came back, and it was in anything but a far-away voice he began, briskly: "Now look here, Young Lady, I don't doubt but this lace is great stuff. You say so, and I haven't seen man, woman or child on this side of the Atlantic knows as much as you do. I'm mighty grateful for the lace--don't you forget that, but just the same--well, now I'll tell you. I have a very special reason for wanting something a little livelier than lace. Something that seems to have Paris written on it in red letters--see? Now, where do you get the kind of hats you see some folks wearing, and where do you get the dresses--well, it's hard to describe 'em, but the kind they have in pictures marked 'Breezes from Paris'? You see--_S-ay!_--what do you think of _that?_"
"That" was in a window across the street. It was an opera cloak. He walked toward it, Virginia following. "Now there," he turned to her, his large round face all aglow, "is what I want."
It was yellow; it was long; it was billowy; it was insistently and recklessly regal.
"That's the ticket!" he gloated.
"Of course," began Virginia, "I don't know anything about it. I am in a very strange position, not knowing what your wife likes or--or has. This is the kind of thing everything has to go with or one wouldn't--one couldn't--"
"Sure! Good idea. We'll just get everything to go with it."
"It's the sort of thing one doesn't see worn much outside of Paris--or New York. If one is--now my mother wouldn't care for that coat at all." Virginia took no little pride in that tactful finish.
"Can't sidetrack me!" he beamed. "I want it. Very thing I'm after, Young Lady."
"Well, of course you will have no difficulty in buying the coat without me," said she, as a dignified version of "I wash my hands of