'Oh, Gilbert, I couldn't.'
She looked at him and his excitement, the excitement of the artist, made her smile.
He was so sweet to her she wanted to do what she could to please him.
'I'll try,' she said.
When they went to an optician and, suited with the right size, she placed an eyeglass jauntily in her eye Gilbert clapped his hands.
There and then, before the astonished shopman, he kissed her on both cheeks.
'You look wonderful,' he cried.
So they went down to Italy and spent happy months studying Renaissance and Baroque architecture.
Jane not only grew accustomed to her changed appearance, but found she liked it.
At first she was a little shy when she went into the dining-room of a hotel and people turned round to stare at her, no one had ever raised an eyelid to look at her before, but presently she found that the sensation was not disagreeable.
Ladies came up to her and asked her where she got her dress.
'Do you like it?' she answered demurely.
'My husband designed it for me.'
'I should like to copy it if you don't mind.'
Jane had certainly for many years lived a very quiet life, but she was by no means lacking in the normal instincts of her sex.
She had her answer ready.
'I'm so sorry, but my husband's very particular and he won't hear of anyone copying my frocks.
He wants me to be unique.'
She had an idea that people would laugh when she said this, but they didn't; they merely answered:
'Oh, of course I quite understand.
You are unique.'
But she saw them making mental notes of what she wore, and for some reason this quite 'put her about'.
For once in her life that she wasn't wearing what everybody else did, she reflected, she didn't see why everybody else should want to wear what she did.
'Gilbert,' she said, quite sharply for her, 'next time you're designing dresses for me, I wish you'd design things that people can't copy.'
'The only way to do that is to design things that only you can wear.'
'Can't you do that?'
'Yes, if you'll do something for me.'
'What is it?'
'Cut off your hair.'
I think this was the first time that Jane jibbed.
Her hair was long and thick and as a girl she had been quite vain of it; to cut it off was a very drastic proceeding.
This really was burning her boats behind her.
In her case it was not the first step that cost so much, it was the last; but she took it ('I know Marion will think me a perfect fool, and I shall never be able to go to Liverpool again,' she said), and when they passed through Paris on their way home Gilbert led her (she felt quite sick, her heart was beating so fast) to the best hairdresser in the world.
She came out of his shop with a jaunty, saucy, impudent head of crisp, grey curls.
Pygmalion had finished his fantastic masterpiece: Galatea was come to life.
'Yes,' I said, 'but that isn't enough to explain why Jane is here tonight amid this crowd of duchesses, cabinet ministers and such like; nor why she is sitting on one side of her host with an Admiral of the Fleet on the other.'
'Jane is a humorist,' said Mrs Tower.
'Didn't you see them all laughing at what she said?'
There was no doubt now of the bitterness in Mrs Tower's heart.
'When Jane wrote and told me they were back from their honeymoon I thought I must ask them both to dinner.
I didn't much like the idea, but I felt it had to be done.
I knew the party would be deadly and I wasn't going to sacrifice any of the people who really mattered.
On the other hand I didn't want Jane to think I hadn't any nice friends.
You know I never have more than eight, but on this occasion I thought it would make things go better if I had twelve.
I'd been too busy to see Jane until the evening of the party.
She kept us all waiting a little – that was Gilbert's cleverness – and at last she sailed in.
You could have knocked me down with a feather.
She made the rest of the women look dowdy and provincial.
She made me feel like a painted old trollop.
Mrs Tower drank a little champagne.