"Yet you have been successful. You have built up a good business. The work has repaid you." "A woman's work!" She snapped her gouty fingers with a playful gesture. "Does a woman's work ever repay her? Think of the pleasures I have missed in my life--the excursions, the theatres, the shows. All these I might have had if I hadn't shut myself up every day until dark. And now you wish to do this! You with your youth, with your style, with your husband!" She protested, she pleaded, she reasoned, but in the end Gabriella won her point by the stubborn force of her will. Madame would take her for a few weeks, a few months, a few years, as long as she cared to stay and gave satisfaction. Madame would have her taught what she could learn, would discover by degrees the natural gifts and the amount of training already possessed by young Mrs. Fowler. Young Mrs. Fowler, on the other hand, must "stand around" when required in the showrooms (it was just here that Gabriella won her victory); she must assist at the ordering of gowns, at the selections, and while Madame's patrons were fitted, young Mrs. Fowler must be prepared to assume graceful attitudes in the background and to offer her suggestions with a persuasive air. Suggestions, even futile ones, offered in a charming voice from a distinguished figure in black satin had borne wonderful results in Madame's experience. "I began that way myself, Mrs. Fowler. You may not believe it, but I was once slenderer than you are--my waist measured only nineteen inches and my bust thirty-six--just the figure a man most admires. The result was, you see, that I have had four husbands, though it is true that I supported three of them, and it is always easy to marry if one provides the support. Men are like that. It is their nature. Yes, I began that way with little training, but much natural talent, and a head full of ideas. If one has ideas it is always possible to become a success, but they are rarer even than waists measuring nineteen inches. And I had charm, though you might not believe it now, for charm does not wear. But I made my way up from the bottom, first as errand girl, at the age of ten, and I made it, not by work, for I could never handle a needle, but by ideas. They were once plentiful, and now they are so scarce," she broke off with a sigh of resignation which seemed to accept every fact of experience except the fact of age. "It was a hard life, but it was life, after all. One is not put here to be contented, or one would dread death too much for the purpose of God." In spite of her uncompromising materialism, she was not without an ineradicable streak of superstition which she would probably have called piety. "I am ready to begin at once--to-morrow," said Gabriella, and she added without explanation, obeying, perhaps, an intuitive feeling that to explain a statement is to weaken it, "and I should like to be called by my maiden name while I am here--just Mrs. Carr, if you don't mind."