"Black tulle," said Reherrey, with his air of cool indifference, "black gauze, black cotton..."
It had to be black sateen in the end. "Now you!" said Reherrey, when he had bought six yards at eight francs a yard.
There was white nothing under sixteen francs a yard. "But cheap, cheap, CHEAP stuff," she expostulated--"stuff you would make lampshades of, or dusters. It's only for a fancy dress." The idle little girls assumed a special air. Fanny looked round the shop in desperation. It was like all the shops in Metz--the window dressed, the saleswomen ready, the shelves scrubbed out and polished, the lady waiting at the pay desk--but the goods hadn't come!
Here and there a shelf held a roll or two of some material, and eventually Fanny bought seven yards of white soft stuff at seven francs a yard.
"White," said Reherrey, with a critical look; "how _English_!"
"_Wo_," she said heavily to Elsa's mother still later in the evening, "_ist eine Schneiderin?_"
Elsa took her out into the dark street again, and in at a neighbouring archway, till at the back of deep courtyards they found a tiny flat of a little old lady. "Like this," explained Fanny, drawing with her pencil.
"Why, my mother had a dress like that!" said the little lady, pleased. "Before the last war." She nodded many times. "I know how to make a crinoline. But when do you want it?"
"Ah, dear mademoiselle! How can I! To-day is Saturday. I have only to-day and Monday. Unless.... Are you a Catholic?"
"Then you can sew on Sunday. You can do the frills."
All Sunday Fanny sewed frills under the stag's horn, and when she went to meet Julien in the late afternoon, she had the frills still in a parcel. "What is that?" he asked, as she unfolded the parcel in the empty Cathedral, and began to thread her needle.
"Frills. Hundreds of frills." She shook her lap a little, and yards and yards of white frills leapt on to the floor in a river.
"Those flowers you bought, look, you have never put them in water!"
He shook his head, and leaning from his chair, stretched out his arm for the parcel of white paper. "They are dying. Smell them! They yield more scent when they die." She sat holding the flowers near her face, and not thinking of him very distinctly, but not thinking of anything else.