Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/79

Rh other masculine creature in the world but himself. Such an attitude keeps them lovers, makes them alert, attentive, my dear."

But it didn't seem to keep Stephen a lover. It didn't make Stephen alert and attentive. It worked just the other way with him.

reflections did not possess Stella in the theater. It was later, alone on the train, returning to her beach hotel that she glanced into her past. She didn't allow herself to do so frequently. It didn't make her any happier. Things had been so rosy, so promising ten years ago—so far beyond her most extravagant girlhood dreams. And now—now! Resolutely she turned her thoughts to other things. She was to meet Alfred Munn again the following Saturday for lunch and another matinee. What should she wear? The sudden necessity of a new early-fall hat gave her a little thrill of delight.

There was nothing in the world Stella enjoyed more than a morning spent in Boston at the expensive uptown shops, pricing and trying on hats, followed by an afternoon in the downtown department stores buying buckram, wire, velvet, feathers, ornaments, flowers, and what-not, and the long inspiring day afterwards shut up in her room moulding with her clever fingers a copy of some little gem that a far-away artist in Paris had conceived.

When Stella said good-bye to Laurel, her plan to spend two hours in the shops had not been an exciting prospect to her. It was stupid to shop if you had nothing you had to buy. The chance meeting