truth was unimpeachable. The perfection of his accompaniments had
arisen in his youth from a secret feeling for fitness and harmony.
Texture and colour gave him almost abnormal pleasure. His expression
of this as a masculine creature had its limits which resulted in
a concentration on perfection. Even at five-and-twenty however he
had never been called a dandy and even at five-and-forty no one
had as yet hinted at Beau Brummel though by that time men as well
as women frequently described to each other the cut and colour
of the garments he wore, and tailors besought him to honour them
with crumbs of his patronage in the ambitious hope that they might
mention him as a client. And the simple fact that he appeared in
a certain colour or cut set it at once on its way to become a
fashion to be seized upon, worn and exaggerated until it was
dropped suddenly by its originator and lost in the oblivion of
cheap imitations and cheap tailor shops. The first exaggeration
of the harmony he had created and the original was seen no more.

Feather herself had a marvellous trick in the collecting of her
garments. It was a trick which at times barely escaped assuming the
proportions of absolute creation. Her passion for self-adornment
expressed itself in ingenious combination and quite startling
uniqueness of line now and then. Her slim fairness and ash-gold
gossamer hair carried airily strange tilts and curves of little
or large hats or daring tints other women could not sustain
but invariably strove to imitate however disastrous the results.
Beneath soft drooping or oddly flopping brims hopelessly unbecoming
to most faces hers looked out quaintly lovely as a pictured child's
wearing its grandmother's bonnet. Everything draped itself about
or clung to her in entrancing folds which however whimsical were
never grotesque.