She told herself that she was the daughter of a judge, the wife of a doctor, and that she did not care to know a capering tailor.  She told herself that she was not responsive to men . . . not even to Percy Bresnahan.  She told herself that a woman of thirty who heeded a boy of twenty-five was ridiculous.  And on Friday, when she had convinced herself that the errand was necessary, she went to Nat Hicks’s shop, bearing the not very romantic burden of a pair of her husband’s trousers.  Hicks was in the back room.  She faced the Greek god who, in a somewhat ungodlike way, was stitching a coat on a scaley sewing-machine, in a room of smutted plaster walls.

She saw that his hands were not in keeping with a Hellenic face.  They were thick, roughened with needle and hot iron and plow-handle.  Even in the shop he persisted in his finery.  He wore a silk shirt, a topaz scarf, thin tan shoes.

This she absorbed while she was saying curtly, “Can I get these pressed, please?”

Not rising from the sewing-machine he stuck out his hand, mumbled, “When do you want them?”

“Oh, Monday.”

The adventure was over.  She was marching out.

“What name?” he called after her.

He had risen and, despite the farcicality of Dr. Will Kennicott’s bulgy trousers draped over his arm, he had the grace of a cat.

“Kennicott.”

“Kennicott.  Oh!  Oh say, you’re Mrs. Dr. Kennicott then, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”  She stood at the door.  Now that she had carried out her preposterous impulse to see what he was like, she was cold, she was as ready to detect familiarities as the virtuous Miss Ella Stowbody.

“I’ve heard about you.  Myrtle Cass was saying you got up a dramatic club and gave a dandy play.  I’ve always wished I had a chance to belong to a Little Theater, and give some European plays, or whimsical like Barrie, or a pageant.”

He pronounced it “pagent”; he rhymed “pag” with “rag.”

Carol nodded in the manner of a lady being kind to a tradesman, and one of her selves sneered, “Our Erik is indeed a lost John Keats.”

He was appealing, “Do you suppose it would be possible to get up another dramatic club this coming fall?”

“Well, it might be worth thinking of.”  She came out of her several conflicting poses, and said sincerely, “There’s a new teacher, Miss Mullins, who might have some talent.  That would make three of us for a nucleus.  If we could scrape up half a dozen we might give a real play with a small cast.  Have you had any experience?”

“Just a bum club that some of us got up in Minneapolis when I was working there.  We had one good man, an interior decorator—­maybe he was kind of sis and effeminate, but he really was an artist, and we gave one dandy play.  But I——­Of course I’ve always had to work hard, and study by myself, and I’m probably sloppy, and I’d love it if I had training in rehearsing—­I mean, the crankier the director was, the better I’d like it.  If you didn’t want to use me as an actor, I’d love to design the costumes.  I’m crazy about fabrics—­textures and colors and designs.”