Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/336

 to pay the price of any whim—it could not be that she doubted what answer she should receive. And yet she did—did, and had before this: so much was evident at first sight. She was a curious gypsyish type, for all her Rue de la Paix curvings and slim, inevitable folds and pleats; a full, drooping mouth in a slender dark face, great brown eyes and heavy waves of black hair. She looked discontented and ready to make some one suffer for it.

"Well—can I?" she repeated, as Caroline stared. "I'm ready to pay, of course."

"I don't know—I don't live here," said Caroline shortly. She felt untidy and badly dressed beside this graceful thing standing in a faint cloud of subtle perfume of her own; her sleeves were too short and her heavy shoes knobby and worn. She wanted furiously to smell sweet like that; and the golden bag—oh, to feel it, powerful and careless, on her wrist!

"Can you find out?" said the girl, eyeing the room attentively; "my car broke down—the man left it in the road and went to Ogdenville for gasoline. I've got to rest somewhere."