THE Odyssey or the Argonautic, or whatever you like to call the epic of the first wild adventure of a young woman into the Infinite of Clothes, has yet to be written. It would need not only a poet, but a master of psychology, to record the myriad vibrations of the soul as it reacts to temptations, yieldings, tremulous thrills of the flesh, exquisite apprehensions, fluttering joys, and each last voluptuous plenitude of content. It is an adventure which absorbs every faculty of the will; which ignores hunger and thirst, weariness of limb and ache of head; which makes the day a dream of reality and the night the reality of a dream. Hardened women of the world with frock-worn minds are caught at times by the lure of the adventure, even when it is a question of a dress or two and a poor half a dozen hats. But how manifold more potent the spell in the case of one who starts with her young body in Nymph-like innocence and is called upon to clothe it again and again in infinite variety, from toe to head, from innermost secret daintiness to outward splendour of bravery! Such a record would explain Olivia, not only to the world, but to herself during that first fortnight in London. Her hours could be reckoned by gasps of wonder. She lost count of time, of money, of human values. Things that had never before entered into her philosophy, such as the subtle shade of silk stockings which would make or mar a costume, loomed paramount in importance. The after-use scarcely occurred to her. Sufficient for the day was the chiffon thereof; also the gradual transformation of herself from the prim slip of a girl with just the pretension (in her own mind) to good looks, into a radiant and somewhat distinguished dark-haired little personage. Her shrinkings, her arguments with Lydia Dawlish, her defeats, went all into the melting-pot of her delight. “No bath salts, my dear?” cried Lydia. “Whoever heard of a woman not using bath salts?” So bath salts were ordered. And—horrified: “My dear, you don’t mean to say you wash your face in soap and water. What will become of your skin?” So Olivia was put under the orders of a West End specialist, who stocked her dressing-table with delectable creams and oils. It was all so new, so unheard of, so wonderful to the girl, an experience worth the living through, even though all thousands at deposit at the bank should vanish at the end of it. Merely to sit in a sensuously furnished room and have beautiful women parade before her, clad in dreams of loveliness—any one of which was hers for a scribble on a bit of pink paper—evoked within her strange and almost spiritual emotions. Medlow was countless leagues away; this transcended the London even of her most foolish visions. Afterwards Olivia, when, sense of values being restored she looked back on this phantasmagoria of dressmakers, milliners, lingerie makers and furriers, said to Lydia Dawlish: