"That's just the trouble. It satisfies you, but it suffocates me. I've
got a pink-crêpe-de-Chine soul. Pink crêpe de Chine--you hear?"

He sat back on his heels.

"It--Is it true, then, Hester that--that you're making up with that
salesman from New York?"

"Why," she said, coloring--"why, I've only met him twice walking up High
Street, evenings!"

"But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester?"

"Say, who was answering your questions this time last year?"

"But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester? Isn't it?"

"Well, of all the nerve!"

But it was.

* * * * *

The rest tells glibly. The salesman, who wore blue-and-white-striped
soft collars with a bar pin across the front, does not even enter the
story. He was only a stepping-stone. From him the ascent or descent, or
whatever you choose to call it, was quick and sheer.

Five years later Hester was the very private, the very exotic,