Chapter 18

XVIII

"BUT I can't think," said Ellie Vanderlyn earnestly, "why you
don't announce your engagement before waiting for your divorce.
People are beginning to do it, I assure you--it's so much
safer!"

Mrs. Vanderlyn, on the way back from St. Moritz to England, had
paused in Paris to renew the depleted wardrobe which, only two
months earlier, had filled so many trunks to bursting. Other
ladies, flocking there from all points of the globe for the same
purpose, disputed with her the Louis XVI suites of the Nouveau
Luxe, the pink-candled tables in the restaurant, the hours for
trying-on at the dressmakers'; and just because they were so
many, and all feverishly fighting to get the same things at the
same time, they were all excited, happy and at ease. It was the
most momentous period of the year: the height of the "dress
makers' season."

Mrs. Vanderlyn had run across Susy Lansing at one of the Rue de
la Paix openings, where rows of ladies wan with heat and emotion
sat for hours in rapt attention while spectral apparitions in
incredible raiment tottered endlessly past them on aching feet.

Distracted from the regal splendours of a chinchilla cloak by
the sense that another lady was also examining it, Mrs.
Vanderlyn turned in surprise at sight of Susy, whose head was
critically bent above the fur.

"Susy! I'd no idea you were here! I saw in the papers that you
were with the Gillows." The customary embraces followed; then
Mrs. Vanderlyn, her eyes pursuing the matchless cloak as it
disappeared down a vista of receding mannequins, interrogated
sharply: "Are you shopping for Ursula? If you mean to order
that cloak for her I'd rather know."

Susy smiled, and paused a moment before answering. During the
pause she took in all the exquisite details of Ellie Vanderlyn's
perpetually youthful person, from the plumed crown of her head
to the perfect arch of her patent-leather shoes. At last she
said quietly: "No--to-day I'm shopping for myself."

"Yourself? Yourself?" Mrs. Vanderlyn echoed with a stare of
incredulity.

"Yes; just for a change," Susy serenely acknowledged.

"But the cloak--I meant the chinchilla cloak ... the one with
the ermine lining ...."

"Yes; it is awfully good, isn't it? But I mean to look
elsewhere before I decide."

Ah, how often she had heard her friends use that phrase; and how
amusing it was, now, to see Ellie's amazement as she heard it
tossed off in her own tone of contemptuous satiety! Susy was
becoming more and more dependent on such diversions; without
them her days, crowded as they were, would nevertheless have
dragged by heavily. But it still amused her to go to the big
dressmakers', watch the