He turned his attention to tempting her to extravagance in dress.  Rut his success there was not all he could have wished.  She wore better clothes—­much better.  She no longer looked the poor working girl, struggling desperately to be neat and clean.  She had almost immediately taken on the air of the comfortable classes.  Rut everything she got for herself was inexpensive and she made dresses for herself, and trimmed all her hats.  With the hats Norman found no fault.  There her good taste produced about as satisfactory results as could have been got at the fashionable milliners—­more satisfactory than are got by the women who go there, with no taste of their own beyond a hazy idea that they want “something like what Mrs. So-and-So is wearing.”  But homemade dresses were a different matter.

Norman longed to have her in toilettes that would bring out the full beauty of her marvelous figure.  He, after the manner of the more intelligent and worldly-wise New York men, had some knowledge of women’s clothes.  His sister knew how to dress; Josephine knew how, though her taste was somewhat too sober to suit Norman—­at least to suit him in Dorothy.  He thought out and suggested dresses to Dorothy, and told her where to get them.  Dorothy tried to carry out at home such of his suggestions as pleased her—­for, like all women, she believed she knew how to dress herself.  Her handiwork was creditable.  It would have contented a less exacting and less trained taste than Norman’s.  It would have contented him had he not been infatuated with her beauty of face and form.  As it was, the improvement in her appearance only served to intensify his agitation.  He now saw in her not only all that had first conquered him, but also those unsuspected beauties and graces—­and possibilities of beauty and grace yet more entrancing, were she but dressed properly.

“You don’t begin to appreciate how beautiful you are,” said he.  It had ever been one of his rules in dealing with women to feed their physical vanity sparingly and cautiously, lest it should blaze up into one of those consuming flames that produce a very frenzy of conceit.  But this rule, like all the others, had gone by the board.  He could not conceal his infatuation from her, not even when he saw that it was turning her head and making his task harder and harder.  “If you would only go over to New York to several dressmakers whose names I’ll give you, I know you’d get clothes from them that you could touch up into something uncommon.”

“I can’t afford it,” said she.  “What I have is good enough—­and costs more than I’ve the right to pay.”  And her tone silenced him; it was the tone of finality, and he had discovered that she had a will.

* * * * *