home, one of these fine ladies would catch fire. The yards and yards of material spread upon the hoops burned like tinder. The lady was instantly enveloped in a rising curtain of fire, and no adoring elegant beau in plaid waistcoat and pantaloons could save her. Lanice knew that once your skirt brushed across the lighted hearth you were doomed to die cruelly. Yet like the other ladies she accepted the danger and inconvenience, and like them she walked a little stiffly and consciously. She was conscious not only of her billowing clothes but of the burden of her ladyhood, and she carried herself as she might some rare and fragile thing, almost too precious to trust to its own feet. But sometimes she was more conscious of the gross skeleton beneath the transient elegancies of her toilette, the satin skin and delicately modeled flesh. He (for to her all skeletons were male) waited within and knew that some time all else would be gone and then he would come forth, grinning. As her fingers felt for him, she grew afraid and resentful, and turned with timid desperation to other more cheerful thoughts.
In spite of the burden of her own ladyhood and Miss Bigley's ideals, she at last asked Mr. Fox for a corner of her own in the warren of Redcliffe & Fox. All the younger gentlemen laid off their tight coats and helped move the two ceiling-high bookcases that were to cut off a small cubby-hole for the 'captive artist.' Mr. Fox insisted that the backs of the bookcases, which made two of Lanice's walls, should be painted soft green to match her portièred entrance.
