Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/37



Long after her visit to Paris, Sadi had succumbed to one more foreign influence. Visiting a New York shop, she had seen a Fortuny gown, one of those crinkly crêpe robes, knotted at the shoulders with cords of gold, hanging straight like a Mother Hubbard, but belted at the waist with an ornate girdle. She had purchased this garment, and since that date she had never worn anything else. For ten years, two or three times a year, a box arrived with a new Fortuny gown; there had been red ones, blue ones, green ones, and brown ones, old gold and old rose, but the model was always exactly the same. Wearing one of these dresses, Sadi drove along the dusty roads in her surrey, as Louise de la Ramé, in white velvet costumes designed by Worth, had driven along the roads of Tuscany.

Sadi was a large woman, with large bones, large hands, large feet, a large nose, and large eyes. She had a large mole on her throat under her large