compared with the bald cranium).

"What an idea!" ejaculated Madame Valière. "To what end?"

"Since you are here," returned Madame Dépine, indifferently. "You may
as well leave your measurements. Then when you decide yourself--Is it
not so, monsieur?"

The _coiffeur_, like a good man of business, eagerly endorsed the
suggestion. "Perfectly, madame."

"But if one's head should change!" said Madame Valière, trembling with
excitement at the vivid imminence of the visioned wig.

"_Souvent femme varie_, madame," said the _coiffeur_. "But it is the
inside, not the outside of the head."

"But you said one is not the dome of the Invalides," Madame Valière
reminded him.

"He spoke of our old blocks," Madame Dépine intervened hastily. "At
our age one changes no more."

Thus persuaded, the "Princess" in her turn denuded herself of her
wealth of wig, and Madame Dépine watched with unsmiling satisfaction
the stretchings of tape across the ungainly cranium.

"_C'est bien_," she said. "I return with your fifty francs on the
instant."