There was nothing in the world Stella enjoyed more than a morning spent in Boston at the expensive uptown shops, pricing and trying on hats, followed by an afternoon in the downtown department stores buying buckram, wire, velvet, feathers, ornaments, flowers, and what-not, and the long inspiring day afterward shut up in her room moulding with her clever fingers a copy of some little gem that a far-away artist in Paris had conceived.

When Stella said good-bye to Laurel, her plan to spend two hours in the shops had not been an exciting prospect to her. It was stupid to shop if you had nothing you had to buy. The chance meeting with Alfred Munn provided Stella with the necessary incentive to start the machinery of her creative genius going. She would have to have a new dress, too. Perhaps she could pick up some summer silk thing marked down, and pep it up with some black bead trimming, at present on an old chiffon evening gown of hers she scarcely ever wore. Bead trimming was being worn again this fall. Possibly it would be a good idea to overhaul her entire wardrobe immediately, even if it was early in the season. Men like variety, and it looked as if Alfred Munn meant to see her rather often during Laurel’s absence.

When he had put her aboard her train, he had told her that if she didn’t object to leaving the seashore for the city frequently he was going to keep her from getting lonely, if she’d let him, while the kid was away.

She wished he wouldn’t call Laurel “the kid” and the “offspring.” She wished his linen collar hadn’t been grimy around the top edge. She wished he hadn’t chanced to omit shaving that morning. A man who shaved every morning without reference to the day’s programme, and put on a clean collar without reference to the old one, was one of Stella’s tests of a gentleman. Alfred Munn was never guilty of any such offenses when he was the vogue in Milhampton. Yes, yes, Stephen was right. Second-rate—that was the term he used to apply to Alfred Munn. Well, she didn’t care. It didn’t rob orchestra seats at the most popular shows in town of their attraction for Stella, or luncheon-tables in the most popular restaurant in town of their luxury and joy. Alfred Munn was going to take her for lunch next Saturday to the newest and most expensive hotel in the city.

4

STELLA SPENT THAT evening packing her trunks (there remained two old-fashioned hump-backed affairs), and again it was early morning before she lay down in the battered white iron bed to go to sleep.