None of her customers had yet pointed out that one could buy fifteen cheaper hats for this price, which, allowing three months for the season, would require of each hat less than a week’s endurance. Every one who came to her really wished to pay too much for a hat. They all knew, of course, that the bit of fur and lace and satin she gave them didn’t cost one-fifth of the price, but they paid the surplus for the style--that Angélique style. She went into the back parlour, where Sillon and Devery were draping a collapsible form in a green tulle. "Hello!" they both said, cheerfully. "Wouldn’t you know this dress was for a fat woman--or should I say, a well-rounded figure?" said Devery. "They’re all wild about green, the big ones. I wonder why?" "Congratulate her!" said Sillon. "Angelica, tell her how nice your name looks out there. There she was, all Sunday afternoon, painting it and talking about your greatness and your coming rise to fame and fortune." Angelica sat down. "It’s lovely," she said. "It makes me as happy as can be to see it there, like that; but I’ve been thinking--isn’t it all queer, and silly?--about their saying my hats are so becoming, and all that. Why, they could get lots of things that really suited them better for almost nothing! Do you know what I think it is? I think it’s because when I make ’em pay so much they take more pains in putting the things on, and that’s why they look better. They dress their hair so carefully, and try to have everything--harmonious." "That’s a trade secret," said Sillon. "It isn’t at all the thing to say. Our line is, ‘Of course, if you want anything really good, you’ve got to pay for it.’ Stick to that, Angélique!" "Down with the rich!" said Devery. "Bleed them white and drain them dry!" "My father was a Socialist," said Angelica, with calm assurance. She had no need to add, and they had no need to know, that he had been a Socialist barber; nor was she yet advanced enough not to avoid, with ridiculous shame, her Italian blood. "Mother says he was specially furious at women who spent a lot on clothes." This was another block in the edifice she was painfully erecting. She was creating for herself a past and an environment which, without being extravagantly false, should yet be in keeping with what she intended to become--a foundation for her coming greatness. She often mentioned, casually, her father and her mother and her Scotch grandparents. She admitted that she and her mother were poor, but she suggested an admirable and distinguished poorness. She had actually got so far as to indicate, with rare delicacy, that her being in business was a distress to her old-fashioned mother. All through that day there was the same elating and intoxicating success. All the customers who came in were satisfied, praised her, and paid her money. Nothing went wrong.