A pair of jade earrings. A fan made of peacock feathers. An Egyptian carved ivory cigarette box. A pair of high-heeled silken mules trimmed with ostrich and rhinestone buckles. Two thin volumes of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay. . . . He shopped, as men do, with elaborate boredom and carelessness, so that the salespeople should clearly understand that all this was to him a matter of the most trivial unimportance.
Thought of candy drew him at length into a gay little store where the lights were pink and the air was heavy and sugar-smelling, but he left without making a purchase. Candy was too conventional for Yvonne, too much the sort of thing one gave to girls one didn't care about. Perfume? No, perfume wouldn't do either. The fragrance that hung about Yvonne and stirred when she stirred was a thing not put up in bottles to be sold at random. It was a thing most personally Yvonne's. It told of rare sachets in bureau drawers, and costly crystals of salt in the bath, and a shining exquisite cleanliness. You couldn't buy it, Well, flowers, then. How about flowers? Conventional, too, of course, if you got roses or violets, but there were other kinds. . . . He selected finally a huge sheaf of red poppies. All his other gifts he had had sent, but the poppies he took along, carrying the box under his arm with a lordly air of having not the faintest idea how it came to be there.
Yvonne's maid answered his ring. A musical comedy maid in a black silk gown with short flipping skirts. She eyed Jock deferentially, being a servant, and approvingly, being a woman. "Miss Mountford—" she began.
"—is making herself beautiful for Mr. Hamill," finished Yvonne's voice from an open door a little
