Annoyed by these conversational harrowers, Charity had finally gone to her dressmaker, Dutilh, and asked him to save her from vegetation! He saw that she was a young woman in sore need of a compliment, and he flattered her lavishly. He did more for her improvement in five minutes than six doctors, seventeen clergymen, and thirty financiers could have done. A compliment in time is a heart-stimulant with no acetanilid reaction. Also he told her how wonderful she had been in the past, recalling by its name and by the name of its French author many a gown she had worn, as one would tell a great actress what roles he had seen her in. He clothed her with praise and encouragement, threw a mantle of crimson velvet about her. And she crimsoned with pride, and her hard, thin lips velveted with beauty. She responded so heartily that he was enabled to sell her a gown of very sumptuous mode, its colors laid on as with the long sweeps of a Sargent's brush. A good deal of flesh was not left to the imagination; as in a Sargent painting, the throat, shoulders, and arms were part of the color scheme. It was a gown to stride in, to stand still in, in an attitude of heroic repose, or to recline in with a Parthenonian grandeur. This gown did not fit her perfectly, just as it came from Paris, but it revealed its possibilities and restored her shaken self-confidence immeasurably. If women--or their husbands--could afford it, they would find perhaps more consolation, restoration, and exaltation at the dressmakers' than at--it would be sacrilege to say where. By the time Charity's new gown was ready for the last fitting Charity had lost her start, and when Dutilh went into the room where she had dressed he was aghast at the difference. On the first day the gown had thrilled her to a collaboration with it. Now she hardly stood up in it. She drooped with exaggerated awkwardness, shrugged her shoulders with sarcasm, and made a face of disgust. Dutilh tried to mask his disappointment with anger. When Charity groaned, “Aren't we awful--this dress and I?” he retorted: “You are, but don't blame the gown. For God's sake, do something for the dress. It would do wonders for you if you would help it!” He believed in a golden rule for his wares: do for your clothes what you would have them do for you. He threatened not to let Charity have the gown at all at any price. He ordered her to take it off. She refused. In the excitement of the battle she grew more animated. Then he whirled her to a mirror and said: “Look like that, and you're a made woman.” She was startled by the vivacity, the authority she saw in her features so long dispirited. She caught the trick of the expression. And actors know that one's expression can control one's moods almost as much as one's moods control one's expressions.