His voice, eager and friendly over the telephone, had given her confidence, and when she went back to the showroom, where the saleswomen were assembling, she was already planning the interview.

At eleven o’clock Madame, who never arrived earlier, was seen descending from a hansom, and a few minutes later she waddled, wheezing, asthmatic, and infirm of joints, through the ivory and gold doorway.  Like some fantastically garlanded Oriental goddess of death, her rouged and powdered face nodded grotesquely beneath the flowery wreath on her hat.  The indestructible youth of her spirit, struggling valiantly against the inert weight of the flesh, had squeezed her enormous figure into the curveless stays of the period, and had painted into some ghastly semblance of health the wrinkled skin of her cheeks.  For underneath the decaying mockery of Madame’s body, the indomitable soul of Madame still fought the everlasting battle of mind against matter, of the immaterial against the material elements.

“There was no use my trying to get here any sooner,” she began in an apologetic tone when she was face to face with Gabriella behind the red velvet curtains of her private office.  “My asthma was so bad all night, I had to doze sitting up, and I didn’t get any sound sleep until daybreak.  If I don’t begin to mend before long I’ll have to give up, that’s all there is to it.  There ain’t any use my trying to hold on much longer.  I’m too sick to think about fighting, and sometimes I don’t care what becomes of the business.  I want to go to some high place in Europe where I can get my breath, and I’m going to stay there, I don’t care what happens.  There ain’t any use my trying to hold on,” she repeated disconsolately.

Gabriella’s opportunity had come, and she grasped it with the quickness of judgment which had enabled her to achieve her moderate success.

“I believe I could carry on this business,” she said, and her quiet assurance impressed Madame’s turbulent temper.  With a brief return of her mental alertness, the old woman studied her carefully.

“I don’t want any responsibility.  I want to be rid of the whole thing,” she said after a pause.

Gabriella nodded comprehendingly.  “I believe I could carry it on successfully,” she repeated.  “Your customers like me.  I think I understand how the business ought to be run.  I have been here ten years, and I feel perfectly confident that I could make it successful.”

“I’ve had offers—­good offers,” observed Madame warily, for she was incapable of liberating herself at the age of seventy-two from the lifelong suspicion that some one was taking advantage of her, that something was being got from her for nothing, “and, of course, I was only joking about having to stop work,” she added, “I am retiring from choice, not from necessity.”

“I understand,” agreed Gabriella quietly.

“But I should like you to have the name,” pursued Madame “A little money would be necessary, of course—­perhaps you might buy a half interest—­that would be simple.  You could make a big success of it with your social position and your wealthy acquaintances.  Surely you can find some one who is ready to make such a splendid investment?”