ABSTRACT
‘She is one of the few women whom I feel I could not improve with a touch,’ said Clara Middleton of Miss Dale. Rare compliment of woman to woman!—and when all’s said and done, a compliment paid only in fiction. These were finished works of art, of their kind perfect; certainly not to be improved with a touch. Creatures apart, they paced the ballroom with the quick, purposeful steps of predatory pumas; up and down; across; up again and back, then disappearing into the interior beyond the lights. A hundred dresses from Paris, and all the hats, the shoes, jewels, perfumes, furs, and frou-frou to go with them—one imagines the aircraft which wafted this fabulous cargo to England as a modern Cleopatra’s barge, each mannequin a contemporary Cleopatra, reclining in her silken safety strap; each Cleo leaving behind some sorrowing Antoine, although not, one dare swear, destined to be queen of any British heart.
