taneously; but Geoffrey said it because he could n't say "Damn!"

Mrs. Dering ripped some more calico; it made a sound like the sudden breaking of a squall at sea.

Then Emily said slowly:

"I do believe you could be a model, Fanny, if Mr. Amberley can tell us of any nice artists, and the right kind of pictures for you to sit for."

"If I'm to earn my living," said Fanny, inexorably, "I shall have to sit to all kinds of artists and for whatever pictures they have in their heads. When you can start picking and choosing it 's because you don't need money."

Emily evaded this iron truth.

"There must," she said, appealing to Geoffrey, "be a great many women artists now, are n't there, Geoffrey?"

"Oh, heaps," said Geoffrey, eagerly. "I can make a list of them, and send you a few introductions."

"And, then," said Emily, with another inspiration, "you can paint her yourself." "I thought," said Mrs. Dering, "that you told me, Emily, artists had always to choose their own subjects?"

"I have a feeling," said Emily, earnestly, "that Geoffrey could paint Fanny. Could n't you, Geoffrey?"

Quite apart from hating to resist Emily's feelings, Geoffrey knew that he could. He had seen it, solidly seen it, from the moment he came into the room. It wasn't her beauty,-he would almost rather she had been plain,-it was simply that she could be almost anything you liked, and always with that look of life in her, so indelibly stained and marred.

All her lines were histories; in the depths of her mysterious, hardened eyes were crushed and drowned a hundred secrets. She had not been easily bad; there was in her none of the dullness of the path of least resistance. She had resisted; perhaps she was still capable of resistance. Life had made her what she was, and in return had left in her firm, perfect lips, in the chiseling of her delicate, strong chin, some hint of her power to mold others. She had a terrible power.

"Is he an artist?" Fanny asked indifferently. "Well, you never can tell, of I should have thought he was just an ordinary man."

course.

IN

N the country, in the "provinces," it is good to come across those old albums of fashions. One happens on them, forgotten in a corner of the library, among the romances of Paul de Kock and the works of Eugène Sue, near the collection of family relics, under the plays of M. Scribe and the poems of Mme. DesbordesValmore. What does n't one find in a country library? A thick layer of dust covers them; their leaves have been blown about in the wind, and their covers have gone through terrible ordeals. Evidently the children of the household have amused themselves with these old albums, and after the children have grown up they have been put back again in their places, never to be disturbed again.

From their retreat I lately drew out a volume of the "Courrier des Dames," another of the "Sylphide," a third of the "Follet"-priceless discoveries. There one by one I saw the dresses my grand

mother once wore, others that were the latest thing when my mother was young, antiquated riding-habits, waistcoats of a superannuated cut, like those of the old uncles who used to dance me on their knees and who remained faithful to them to the end of their lives. I saw once more the organdie petticoats of the time of Louis Philippe, the fichus à la paysanne, the stringed bonnets of gros de Naples, the flowered hats of rice-straw. What strange dresses they wore, those ladies of the time of the citizen-king! What wasplike waists men had in those days, what masses of hair! Then there were the crinolines of the Second Empire, the abbreviated under-petticoats brought in by Princess Metternich, and the bustles, those famous bustles of the period after 1870. Whatever put it into the heads of women to encumber themselves with such a bizarre, superfluous piece of furniture? As I was marveling over so remarkable

an invention, I put my hand upon an ancient album of photographs, and there passed before my eye certain celebrities of fifty years ago: M. de Viel-Caspel in a stove-pipe hat as big as himself; the Duc de Gramont-Caderousse, whose trousers were so tight that they must have prevented him from sitting down; and the emperor himself, wearing a jacket so short that it had the air of a jest.

Heaven knows this was not the first time that I had looked through an old album of photographs and fashion-plates going

back to Louis Philippe and Charles X. But always on these occasions I am surprised and astonished at the same time. The fashions of the time of Louis XIV disconcert me less, I think, than those of our own grandparents, and I cannot get used to the things they took it into their heads to wear. It all seems so far away, so out of date, so obsolete, so comic, to be frank. What surprising, uncouth shapes they present! And what embarrassment, what a scandal, what a revolt there would be if we were condemned, one of these days, ladies and gentlemen, to put on again those costumes that passed not so long ago as the last word in elegance!

But it is a mistake to feel so astounded. After all, the fashions that charm us today will appear just as extraordinary to our grandchildren, and there is nothing at all to prove that our grandchildren will not return to the styles of Napoleon III. In fact, one can even say as a certainty that they will, since everything has already been tried, worn, and worn again. One can even say as a certainty that in the twentieth century no one will be able to boast that he has created anything absolutely new. The crinolines of the Empress Eugènie were a reminiscence of the panniers of Marie Antoinette, and long before her time, in the Orient, women had conceived the idea of enlarging their skirts by means of hoops. In 1915-I should

say in 1912-women of fashion affected high waists and sheath dresses; but before them Mme. Récamier had done the same thing, and the dresses of Mme. Récamier were suggested by the Greeks and the

Romans. In short, like everything else, fashion is a part of the same everlasting come-and-go. We do not advance as we are so prone to imagine; we repeat our steps. In politics nations inevitably pass from republic to monarchy, only to become republican once more; in art the formulæ that are called classic replace at almost regular intervals other formulæ that appear not to be, and so, in conformity with the universal law, tight dresses and loose dresses yield to each other in turn. For, in their main lines, the evolutions of fashion amount to nothing more, and if full costumes triumph at one moment, the scantier style very quickly gets the upper hand again. Questions of detail I leave to professionals.

Considered from this point of view the whole matter is plainly nothing if not monotonous. What really is worth noting is the reason that determines these changes -changes that are ephemeral and futile, if you like, but which, for all that, if you consider them a little, touch the actual customs and the history of an epoch. The mere whim of a fashion-designer or the fancy of a pretty woman is not enough to explain this. The one or the other of course can momentarily set the vogue in this or that detail of the toilet, revive a manner of dressing the hair, resuscitate a forgotten color, launch a new fabric. But there is no denying that where any really important innovation is in question, if this innovation has no connection with the ideas and the exigencies of the moment, it never succeeds in establishing itself at all durably. A few years ago I remember that one of our great fashion-designers conceived the unfortunate idea of wishing to make the women of Paris wear trouser

skirts. Long articles were published in the newspapers intended to pique feminine curiosity. Balls and dinners were organized where only those women were to be admired who dressed according to the new rite. It finally reached the point where trousers of an exquisite design were distributed free to all those who would promise to show them off at the races. In vain. After a month of effort this magnificent project had to be given up, and the so-called "trouser-skirts" survived merely as a memory or more exactly as a myth. One was forced to suppose that their hour had not yet come.

No, fashion has very deep roots; it is bound up closely with our habits, our intimate tastes. Its variations, if we care to note them, correspond with our changes of humor, and these changes of humor are themselves the result of facts great and small, events of all sorts. That is where the interest of the question lies, fashion being in sum nothing but the perpetual reflection of our tendencies and our needs. We do not think of the costumes pictured in the album of the "Courrier des Dames," but of the people who wore them, their way of living, their environment,

their furniture, their books, the knickknacks they loved. A coiffure, a simple collar of the time of the Duchesse d'Angoulême can, in the strictest sense, explain a certain state of mind which was not that of the preceding epoch; it can evoke the memory of a whole past age. One thinks of the influences that determined the vogue of such and such a feminine costume. These influences are innumerable, complex, insignificant and childish sometimes, but nevertheless real. Everything is mixed up in them: public events and minute happen-. ings of the day, the appearance of new books, the success of a new school of painting, the appearance of a play or a ballet at the opera, even the conditions of life itself, and those thousand mysterious currents which manifest themselves at the same moment in all countries and the charm of which we feel without being entirely aware of them.

The subject is inexhaustible, and by laying history under contribution we are able in a sense to explain fashion by tracing it back to the very remotest epochs. But undoubtedly, as we approach our own time, the transformations and their causes become most apparent and

The

most easily understood. Take the nineteenth century at its outset. One recalls the modest finery, the pretty, unassuming costumes one catches glimpses of in the paintings of Boilly, the sort that women adopted during the Revolution. Money was scarce then, and it was the part of prudence not to be conspicuous. The coquettes had not forgotten to make their charms count, but at the same time they were mindful of the importance of saving their heads. They dressed discreetly. Following the Directory, a time of relative security, there was a general blossoming out. People had passed through terrible times, and they were determined to amuse themselves again, to amuse themselves furiously. They had to make up for lost time. The old society found itself scattered and decimated. New-comers had taken their place, bankers, brokers, armycontractors, all of whom, having profited by the public ruin to accumulate sudden fortunes, asked only for an opportunity to throw their money to the four winds. There was an explosion of mad holidaymaking, a debauch of senseless caprices, a prolonged carnival. The orators of the Convention had done nothing but invoke Rome and the Romans; the citizen David had exalted on his canvases Brutus and Cato. Fashion, too, affected the antique. But what a strange notion of antiquity its devotees had! For Mme. Tallien or Josephine de Beauharnais it was merely a pretext for going half clothed, and nothing could have been more extraordinary than those dinners of Barras, where the women, dressed in floating tunics so diaphanous that they were virtually nude, really imagined that they resembled the Greeks of Tanagra or the Romans of Pompeii. After that came General Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt, and the turbans, the scarfs, the dresses, along with the hangings and the walls, were ornamented with designs and figures reminiscent of the Pharaohs. It was altogether a surprising mixture, representing a complete and final break with the preceding age.

In 1805, Napoleon became emperor of

the French. He had his court at the Tuileries, his dignitaries of the crown, his chamberlains, his ladies of honor. Fashion immediately took its cue and turned to pomp and decorum. The styles became heavy and grandiose. For the newly made duchesses it was not merely a simple question of playing to the gallery; they had to live up to their titles, they had to be majestic.

This note was accentuated still further with fresh nuances at the return of the Bourbons. Along with Louis XVIII a part of the old court came back to France, and naturally the old court could not sufficiently show its disdain for that of Bonaparte. In the eyes of the gentlemen of the old school there was always an abyss between them and the newly made nobility. They set out to show these upstarts what good manners could be. The women especially took particular pains in this matter. They made a study of correctness, of the absolute in good form, of the comme-il-faut, the supreme distinction of restraint, in order to react against the rather flashy, vulgar luxury of the imperial epoch. Imperceptible touches were enough, it appeared, to reveal at once a really well-bred person, an intangible poise, a discreet familiarity of manner, a fashion of speaking in a sort of murmur, a way of placing a kiss on the tips of the fingers, at the edge of the lips, the use or avoidance of certain expressions, the observance of certain epithets in vogue that were considered as the height of good form. And this pointed manner, this sort of prudery, revealed itself as much in matters of dress as in language and ideas. Undoubtedly the mode issued directly from that of the preceding reign, but it seemed to have become unnatural and strained.

One has to come to Louis Philippe to encounter again the languid, simpering, mincing little women whom Eugène Zann and Derdira have represented in their engravings. It was the reign of the bourgeoisie, but also that of Romanticism, and the new plays, poems, and romances had an undeniable influence on fashion. From