for what she wanted?

"What can I do for you, Madam?"

She looked up like a frightened animal.

"I've lost my wedding ring," she stammered. "It was a broad gold one.
I--I don't want my husband to discover it."

How easy it was after all.

The salesman was very sympathetic. She looked at a great number of
rings, toying with them in voluptuous hesitation. She enjoyed fingering
them. At last she chose one. The gold band on her finger frightened her.
It made her feel a strange, different person, rather disreputable and
quite unlike herself.

Miss Wilcox went to the Ritz. It was, she felt, a place where married
ladies without husbands would be neither noticed nor commented on. There
is, after all, nothing so very unusual in a wedding ring and Miss
Wilcox's appearance did not arouse idle and libelous speculations. But
still, she felt safer at the Ritz--there is something so conspicuous
about a quiet hotel.

The next day the fog had been cleared away and the sun, emerging after a
day's rest, sparkled with refreshed gaiety. Miss Wilcox, in deep
mourning, went out to buy new black clothes--lovely they were,
intentionally, not accidentally black, filmy chiffons, rippling
crêpe-de-chines, demure cashmeres, severe, perfect tailleurs. Here and
there touches of snowy crepe gave a relief suitable to deep unhappiness