Half lying on the counter, he was holding her hand, taking the fingers one by one, slipping the glove on with a long, renewed, and persistently caressing air, looking at her as if he expected to see in her face the signs of a voluptuous joy. But she, with her elbow on the velvet counter, her wrist raised, gave him her fingers with the unconcerned air with which she gave her foot to her maid to allow her to button her boot. For her he was not a man; she employed him for such private work with the familiar disdain she showed for the people in her service, without looking at him even. “I don't hurt you, madame?” She replied “No,” with a shake of the head. The smell of the Saxon gloves--that savage smell as of sugared musk--troubled her as a rule; and she sometimes laughed about it, confessing her taste for this equivocal perfume, in which there is a suspicion of the wild beast fallen into some girl's powder-box. But seated at this commonplace counter she did not notice the smell of the gloves, it raised no sensual feeling between her and this salesman doing his work. “And what next, madame?” “Nothing, thanks. Be good enough to carry the parcel to the pay-desk No. 10, for Madame Desforges.” Being a constant customer, she gave her name at a pay-desk, and had each purchase sent there without wanting a shopman to follow her. When she had gone away, Mignot turned towards his neighbour and winked, and would have liked him to believe that wonderful things had just taken place. “By Jove! I'd like to dress her all over!” said he, coarsely. Meanwhile, Madame Desforges continued her purchases. She turned to the left, stopping in the linen department to procure some dusters; then she walked round the shop, going as far as the woollen department at the further end of the gallery. As she was satisfied with her cook, she wanted to make her a present of a dress. The woollen department overflowed with a compact crowd, all the lower middle-class women were there, feeling the stuff, absorbed in mute calculations; and she was obliged to sit down for a moment. The shelves were piled up with great rolls of stuff which the salesmen were taking down one by one, with a sudden pull. They were beginning to get confused with these encumbered counters, on which the stuffs were mixing up and tumbling over each other. It was a rising tide of neutral tints, heavy woollen tones, iron-greys, and blue-greys, with here and there a Scotch tartan, and a blood-red ground of flannel breaking out. And the white tickets on the pieces were like a shower of rare white flakes falling on a black December soil. Behind a pile of poplin, Liénard was joking with a tall girl without hat or bonnet, a work-girl, sent by her mistress to match some merino. He detested these big-sale days, which tired him to death, and he endeavoured to shirk his work, getting plenty of money from his father, not caring a fig about the business, doing just enough to avoid being dismissed.