Lifted Masks | Page 4

did he keep
waving the watch before her. His contempt for everything shown was
open and emphatic. It was also articulate. Virginia grew nervous,
seeing the real red showing through in the Frenchwoman's cheeks. And
when the price was at last named--a price which made Virginia
jubilant--there burst upon her outraged ears something between a jeer

and a howl of rage, the whole of it terrifyingly done in the form of a
groan; she looked at her companion to see him holding up his hands
and wobbling his head as though it 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,