horrors, threatened on one side by a display of most intimate
lingerie, belaced and beribboned distractingly, on the other by a long
rank of slender and gracious (if stolid) feminine limbs, one and all
neatly amputated above their bended knees and bedight in silken
hosiery to shame the rainbow; while to right and left, behind these
impudent revelations, lurked sirens with shameless eyes and mouths of
scarlet mockery.

A cold sweat damped the forehead of P. Sybarite. Inconsistently, his
face flamed. He stared fixedly dead ahead and tore through that aisle
like a delicate-minded jack-rabbit. He thought giggles were audible in
his wake; and ere he could escape found his way barred by Authority
and Dignity in one wonderfully frock-coated person.

"You were looking for something?" demanded this menace incarnate, in
an awful voice accompanied by a terrible gesture.

P. Sybarite brought up standing, his nose six inches from and his eyes
held in fascination to the imitation pearl scarf-pin in the beautiful
cravat affected by his interlocutor.

"Gloves--!" he gasped guiltily.

"This way, if you please."

With this, Dignity and Authority clamped an inexorable hand about his
upper arm, swung him round, and piloted him gently but ruthlessly back
the way he had come, back to the glove counter, where he was planted
directly in front of the dashing, dark saleslady with absorbing back
hair and the manner of remote hauteur.