“Brought you a little trinket, Lou,” he would say. No one else ever called Louise Husack Lou. “They said in New York it was the thing, Dina helped me pick it out. I’m scared of these salesladies, they could sell me anything, but not Dina. She knows.”

The gift might be jewelry, a mink wrap, a cashmere coat soft as cream, lingerie, even occasionally a dress.

“Why, Dave!” Louise would exclaim with a bad simulation of surprise as she lifted the treasure from its velvet or satin or tissue cocoon. “It’s lovely, just perfectly exquisite!” A week, two weeks, perhaps a month would go by. There would be a secret session between Louise and her protégée. “Dina dear, I don’t want to hurt Mr. Husack’s feelings, or yours either, goodness knows, because you helped him pick it out, but I’ve got no use for these things, I’ve got more stuff now than I know what to do with. He forgets I’m not the young bride he married, he gets me things that are meant for a young girl. I know. He used to do the same when I went with him. White mink.” She held it up, she shook it smartly so that the glistening hairs sprang to still more luxuriant profusion. “How would I look in a white mink cape!”

“Why, Aunt Louise, that fur looks lovely against your skin.”

She was not altogether without humor, Louise. “Thanks, dear, but the important thing is, how does my skin look against that fur.” She laughed ruefully at her own joke.

In another week or thereabouts Louise would venture, tentatively, to shift the gift to a more vernal background.

“David”—no one else called him David—“David, I just love that mink stole”—or sapphire and diamond clip, or alligator bag or French lingerie or dozens of pairs of filmy stocklings—“but honestly, maybe it’s my imagination but I think it isn’t right for me, beautiful as it is. White makes me look yellow.… David, all those chiffon stockings are just exquisite but my old veiny legs, and you know I have to wear those old rubber stockings under them for my old swelling ankles, so do you mind if I give them to Dina? Anyway, they’re a teeny bit big for me. I must say I never was a beauty, heaven knows, but I always did have a nice small foot and a high arch, you remember when we were first married you used to say I must have Chinese blood in me, my feet were so small. Maybe Dina could wear them or exchange them … white mink with her black hair … all that jewelry in the bank vault I don’t wear half of it, it just stays there. Dina wears those slinky black dresses so much, a good clip just sets the whole thing off.”

To Dina she once said, perhaps quite innocently, “I always hate to see an old woman loaded down with jewelry.” She used a rather revolting word picture to demonstrate her feeling. Possibly she was beginning to grope her way, with reluctant steps, toward the truth.