"O, you poor dear!" Fitzie leaned over and patted Nan's hand. "That's quite all right. Of course, I understand. Of course, we'll go Saturday." Nan winced. She felt a sudden rage against all this womanish chatter and chirping talk. The smell of women, perfume, furs, dry goods was choking her. I must get out of here. "Walk with me to the Touraine, Fitzie. I'm going home in a taxi." "You extravagant thing. But I simply can't. I've got so much to do ... preparations for departure." "And that Worthington girl?" asked Nan in a carefully offhand voice as they were going down in the packed elevator. "O, I'll call her up and make a date. She's always in at teatime. Shall I phone you, dear?" "Yes, do." Fitzie's short pigeon-breasted figure was caught into the stream of women down the main aisle of the store, over which the arcs hovered like big lilac-white balloons. A last glimpse of the red hat. O, I should have spoken of it; she'll be offended. But such a sight ... The revolving doors swung Nan out on to the pavement, where the air was cold and hard. The signs down Washington Street brandished metallic facets of light. The crowd streamed endlessly dark against the motionlessness of the wide windows of stores. From automobiles moving in compact opposed streams came the rasp of racing motors and a smell of scorched gasoline. Nan made her way slowly through a barbed painful tunnel of light and noise and cold. With a little sigh she sank back into the springy seat of the taxi and let the packages slip out of her hands. There was a musty smell about it that brought up childish dreams of elegance. That picture eternally repeated in the movies of the elegantly gloved heroine stepping into her limousine. To arrive that way stately at the side doors of concert halls, to be handed out by sleekhaired men in frock coats, to stand a moment waiting in a long tightfitting dress of royal blue, her violin in one hand, a smell of roses about her, and from everywhere the terrible dizzy murmur of the waiting audience. Had Mabel Worthington attained all that already? Why, she can't even play, all she's done has been to flaunt her sex. She must be a veritable harlot. I must see her to find out. They were turning the corner out of Massachusetts Avenue. Nan tapped suddenly on the window. "I want to stop at that fruit store ... That's right." "All right, Miss," said the driver smiling. He was a pertlooking young man with a red face and a horseshoe scarf pin. Why am I so timid? I have personality as much as the next girl, she was thinking as warmed by the young man's smile she wandered about the fruit store trying to decide what to buy. At last she lit on some pears. While the Greek, a sallow man with a long nose and close-cropped hair, was putting them in a bag, she spied some Japanese persimmons in a box. "O, I must have some of those for the color." "They are mighty good ... sweet as honey," said the Greek.