Even the notions and dry-goods, flanking the right wall in stacks and bolts, merge into blur, the outline of a white-sateen and corseted woman's torso surmounting the top-most of the shelves with bold curvature. With spring sunshine even hot against the steel rails of Winchester Road, and awnings drawn against its inroads into the window display, Mrs. Shila Coblenz, routing gloom, reached up tiptoe across the haberdashery counter for the suspended chain of a cluster of bulbs, the red of exertion rising up the taut line of throat and lifted chin. "A little light on the subject, Milt." "Let me, Mrs. C." Facing her from the outer side of the counter, Mr. Milton Bauer stretched also, his well-pressed, pin-checked coat crawling up. All things swam out into the glow. The great suspended stud; the background of shelves and boxes; the scissors-like overalls against the wall; a clothes-line of children's factory-made print frocks; a center-bin of women's untrimmed hats; a headless dummy beside the door, enveloped in a long-sleeved gingham apron. Beneath the dome of the wooden stud, Mrs. Shila Coblenz, of not too fulsome but the hour-glass proportions of two decades ago, smiled, her black eyes, ever so quick to dart, receding slightly as the cheeks lifted. "Two twenty-five, Milt, for those ribbed assorted sizes and reenforced heels. Leave or take. Bergdorff & Sloan will quote me the whole mill at that price." With his chest across the counter and legs out violently behind, Mr. Bauer flung up a glance from his order-pad. "Have a heart, Mrs. C. I'm getting two forty for that stocking from every house in town. The factory can't turn out the orders fast enough at that price. An up-to-date woman like you mustn't make a noise like before the war." "Leave or take." "You could shave an egg," he said. "And rush up those printed lawns. There was two in this morning, sniffing around for spring dimities." "Any cotton goods? Next month this time, you'll be paying an advance of four cents on percales." "Stocked." "Can't tempt you with them wash silks, Mrs. C.? Neatest little article on the market to-day." "No demand. They finger it up, and then buy the cotton stuffs. Every time I forget my trade hacks rock instead of clips bonds for its spending-money, I get stung." "This here wash silk, Mrs. C., would--" "Send me up a dress-pattern off this coral-pink sample for Selene." "This here dark mulberry, Mrs. C., would suit you something immense." "That'll be about all." He flopped shut his book, snapping a rubber band about it and inserting it in an inner coat pocket. "You ought to stick to them dark, winy shades, Mrs. C. With your coloring and black hair and eyes, they bring you out like a Gipsy. Never seen you look better than at the Y. M. H. A. entertainment." Quick color flowed down her open throat and into her shirtwaist. It was as if the platitude merged with the very corpuscles of a blush that sank down into thirsty soil.