The Minnies and
Pearls and jewels and jennies would gather round her like courtiers,
bearing wispy frailties of Georgette crepe, delicate chiffon to echo her
cheeks in faint pastel, milky lace to rest in pale disarray against her
neck--damask was used but to cover priests and divans in these days, and
cloth of Samarand was remembered only by the romantic poets.
She would go elsewhere after a while, tilting her head a hundred ways
under a hundred bonnets, seeking in vain for mock cherries to match her
lips or plumes that were graceful as her own supple body.
Noon would come--she would hurry along Fifth Avenue, a Nordic Ganymede,
her fur coat swinging fashionably with her steps, her cheeks redder by a
stroke of the wind's brush, her breath a delightful mist upon the
bracing air--and the doors of the Ritz would revolve, the crowd would
divide, fifty masculine eyes would start, stare, as she gave back
forgotten dreams to the husbands of many obese and comic women.
One o'clock. With her fork she would tantalize the heart of an adoring
artichoke, while her escort served himself up in the thick, dripping
sentences of an enraptured man.
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