collar and dragged him inside, while his mother philandered among the
bronze and terra-cotta statuettes.

Carter strolled across to the glove counter in order to shoot a
few minutes on the wing. His need for gloves was genuine; he had
forgotten to bring a pair with him. But his action hardly calls for
apology, because he had never heard of glove-counter flirtations.

As he neared the vicinity of his fate he hesitated, suddenly
conscious of this unknown phase of Cupid's less worthy profession.

Three or four cheap fellows, sonorously garbed, were leaning over
the counters, wrestling with the mediatorial hand-coverings, while
giggling girls played vivacious seconds to their lead upon the
strident string of coquetry. Carter would have retreated, but he
had gone too far. Masie confronted him behind her counter with a
questioning look in eyes as coldly, beautifully, warmly blue as the
glint of summer sunshine on an iceberg drifting in Southern seas.

And then Irving Carter, painter, millionaire, etc., felt a warm flush
rise to his aristocratically pale face. But not from diffidence. The
blush was intellectual in origin. He knew in a moment that he stood
in the ranks of the ready-made youths who wooed the giggling girls at
other counters. Himself leaned against the oaken trysting place of
a cockney Cupid with a desire in his heart for the favor of a glove
salesgirl. He was no more than Bill and Jack and Mickey. And then he
felt a sudden tolerance for them, and an elating, courageous contempt
for the conventions upon which he had fed, and an unhesitating
determination to have this perfect creature for his own.