“I think that white dress is the meltingest thing I ever saw,” said Lady Eileen, who had walked into the room without waiting for Miss Devereux’s answer to Peter Rolls’s objection.

She was a kind-hearted girl, but, after all, living models were living models until they were dead, and she wasn’t going to lose the chance of getting a dreamy frock out of Rags!  All the goddesses were on their mettle and their feet now, though swaying like tall lilies in a high wind and occasionally bracing themselves against mirrors, while Lady Eileen was in the biggest chair, with Raygan and Peter Rolls standing behind her.  The men also were offered chairs by Miss Vedrine with a lovely play of eyelashes, but refused them:  the chairs, not the eyelashes, which no man could have spurned, despite their scattered effect.

“The white dress, moddam?" (It thrills a flapper to be called “moddam.”) “It is one of the latest designs and considered perfect for a debutante.  No doubt you know it is Mme. Nadine’s custom to name her inspirations.  Come here, if you please, Miss Child!  This is ’First Love.’”

“Looks like it,” remarked Lord Raygan, as Miss Child obeyed.  He might have meant the wearer or the dress.  Peter Rolls flashed a gimlet glance his way to see which.  He felt uncomfortably responsible for the manners of the visitors and the feelings of the visited.  But the face of Rags was grave, and no offence could be taken.  Peter Rolls withdrew the glance, though not before Winifred Child had it intercepted and interpreted.

“I believe he’s a nice fellow,” was the thought that slid through her mind as, like a chicken on a spit, she turned and turned to let Lady Eileen behold “First Love” from every point of view.

“Rippin’, but a foot too tall for you,” said Rags, more because it amused him to prolong the scene than through a real desire to criticise. “You don’t go in for bein’ a sylph.”

Another backhanded compliment for the wearer, if she cared to accept it; but she was beautifully unconscious and, for once, not laughing.  Her eyes looked miles away.  Peter Rolls wondered to what land she had gone.

The girl appeared to be gazing over his head; but, as a matter of fact, she could see him perfectly.  He had black hair and blue eyes, shrewd perhaps, yet they might be kind and merry; just now they looked worried.  She thought him not handsome, but tanned and thin (she detested fat men) and somehow nice.  Win wondered if she were taller than he.  She hated being taller than men, though she owed her present engagement to her height and length of limb.

Miss Devereux respectfully argued that appearances were deceitful. Moddam was quite as sylphlike as the model.  Might the dress be sent to moddam’s cabin to try?  Then it came out that moddam was Lady Eileen O’Neill, and the four tallest dryads visibly brightened, not so much for the owner of the name as for her brother.