“I am going to see Josie Fifer.”

“Now, look here, Sarah!”

But she was off, and Sid Hahn could only follow after, the showman in him anticipating the scene that was to follow.  When he reached the fourth floor of the storehouse Sarah Haddon was there ahead of him.  The two women—­one tall, imperious, magnificent in furs; the other shrunken, deformed, shabby—­stood staring at each other from opposites sides of the worktable.  And between them, in a crumpled, grey-black heap, lay the velvet gown.

“I don’t care who says you can have it,” Josie Fifer’s shrill voice was saying.  “It’s mine, and I’m going to keep it.  Mr. Hahn himself gave it to me.  He said I could cut it up for a dress or something if I wanted to.  Long ago.”  Then, as Sid Hahn himself appeared, she appealed to him.  “There he is now.  Didn’t you, Mr. Hahn?  Didn’t you say I could have it?  Years ago?”

“Yes, Jo,” said Sid Hahn.  “It’s yours, to do with as you wish.”

Sarah Haddon, who never had been denied anything in all her pampered life, turned to him now.  Her bosom rose and fell.  She was breathing sharply.  “But S.H.!” she cried, “S.H., I’ve got to have it.  Don’t you see, I want it!  It’s all I’ve got left in the world of what I used to be.  I want it!” She began to cry, and it was not acting.

Josie Fifer stood staring at her, her eyes wide with horror and unbelief.

“Why, say, listen!  Listen!  You can have it.  I didn’t know you wanted it as bad as that.  Why, you can have it.  I want you to take it.  Here.”

She shoved it across the table.  Sarah reached out for it quickly.  She rolled it up in a tight bundle and whisked off with it without a backward glance at Josie or at Hahn.  She was still sobbing as she went down the stairs.

The two stood staring at each other ludicrously.  Hahn spoke first.

“I’m sorry, Josie.  That was nice of you, giving it to her like that.”

But Josie did not seem to hear.  At least she paid no attention to his remark.  She was staring at him with that dazed and wide-eyed look of one upon whom a great truth has just dawned.  Then, suddenly, she began to laugh.  She laughed a high, shrill laugh that was not so much an expression of mirth as of relief.

Sid Hahn put up a pudgy hand in protest.  “Josie!  Please!  For the love of Heaven don’t you go and get it.  I’ve had to do with one hysterical woman to-day.  Stop that laughing!  Stop it!”

Josie stopped, not abruptly, but in a little series of recurring giggles.  Then these subsided and she was smiling.  It wasn’t at all her usual smile.  The bitterness was quite gone from it.  She faced Sid Hahn across the table.  Her palms were outspread, as one who would make things plain.  “I wasn’t hysterical.  I was just laughing.  I’ve been about seventeen years earning that laugh.  Don’t grudge it to me.”

“Let’s have the plot,” said Hahn.