Re: SPEWS IP range 202.84.188.192-255
Some Bastard
her attire, not the least ribbon, of whose relation to fashion she has
not a definite conception and concerning which she is not immediately
aware whether the lady who just passed by noticed it, because for whose
benefit does she dress if not for other ladies!
Even in my shop where she comes to be fitted out a la mode, even there
she is in fashion. Just as there is a special bathing costume and a
special riding habit, likewise there is a particular kind of dress which
it is the fashion to wear to the dressmaker's shop. That costume is not
insouciant in the same sense as is the negligee a lady is pleased to be
surprised in, earlier in the forenoon, where the point is her belonging
to the fair sex and the coquetry lies in her letting herself be
surprised. The dressmaker costume, on the other hand, is calculated to
be nonchalant and a bit careless without her being embarrassed thereby,
because a dressmaker stands in a different relation to her from a
cavalier. The coquetry here consists in thus showing herself to a man
who, by reason of his station, does not presume to ask for the lady's
womanly recognition, but must be content with the perquisites which fall
abundantly to his share, without her ever thinking of it, or without it
even so much as entering her mind to play the lady before a dressmaker.
The point is, therefore, that her being of the opposite sex is, in a
certain sense, left out of consideration, and her coquetry invalidated,
by the superciliousness of the noble lady who would smile