The key to the heart of Paris is love. He whose key-ring lacks that open sesame never really sees the city, even though he dwell in the shadow of the Sorbonne and comprehend the fiacre French of the Paris cabman. Some there are who craftily open the door with a skeleton key; some who ruthlessly batter the panels; some who achieve only a wax impression, which proves to be useless. There are many who travel no farther than the outer gates. You will find them staring blankly at the stone walls; and their plaint is:

"What do they find to rave about in this town?"

Sophy Gold had been eight days in Paris and she had not so much as peeked through the key-hole. In a vague way she realised that she was seeing Paris as a blind man sees the sun—feeling its warmth, conscious of its white light beating on the eyeballs, but never actually beholding its golden glory.

This was Sophy Gold\'s first trip to Paris, and her heart and soul and business brain were intent on buying the shrewdest possible bill of lingerie and infants\' wear for her department at Schiff Brothers\', Chicago; but Sophy under-estimated the powers of those three guiding parts. While heart, soul, and brain were bent dutifully and indefatigably on the lingerie and infants\'-wear job they also were registering a series of kaleidoscopic outside impressions.

As she drove from her hotel to the wholesale district, and from the wholesale district to her hotel, there had flashed across her consciousness the picture of the chic little modistes\' models and ouvrières slipping out at noon to meet their lovers on the corner, to sit over their sirop or wine at some little near-by café, hands clasped, eyes glowing.

Stepping out of the lift to ask for her room key, she had come on the black-gowned floor clerk, deep in murmured conversation with the valet, and she had seemed not to see Sophy at all as she groped subconsciously for the key along the rows of keyboxes. She had seen the workmen in their absurdly baggy corduroy trousers and grimy shirts strolling along arm in arm with the women of their class—those untidy women with the tidy hair. Bareheaded and happy, they strolled along, a strange contrast to the glitter of the fashionable boulevard, stopping now and then to gaze wide-eyed at a million-franc necklace in a jeweller\'s window; then on again with a laugh and a shrug and a caress. She had seen the silent couples in the Tuileries Gardens at twilight.

Once, in the Bois de Boulogne, a slim, sallow élégant had bent for what seemed an interminable time over a white hand that was stretched from the window of a motor car. He was standing at the curb; in either greeting or parting, and his eyes were fastened on other eyes within the car even while his lips pressed the white hand.

Then one evening—Sophy reddened now at memory of it—she had turned a quiet corner and come on a boy and a girl. The girl was shabby and sixteen; the boy pale, voluble, smiling.

Evidently they were just parting. Suddenly, as she passed, the boy had caught the girl in his arms there on the street corner in the daylight, and had kissed her—not the quick, resounding smack of casual leave-taking, but a long, silent kiss that left the girl limp.

Sophy stood rooted to the spot, between horror and fascination. The boy\'s arm brought the girl upright and set her on her feet.

She took a long breath, straightened her hat, and ran on to rejoin her girl friend awaiting her calmly up the street. She was not even flushed; but Sophy was. Sophy was blushing hotly and burning uncomfortably, so that her eyes smarted.

Just after her late dinner on the eighth day of her Paris stay, Sophy Gold was seated in the hotel lobby. Paris thronged with American business buyers—those clever, capable, shrewd-eyed women who swarm on the city in June and strip it of its choicest flowers, from ball gowns to back combs. Sophy tried to pick them from the multitude that swept past her. It was not difficult. The women visitors to Paris in June drop easily into their proper slots.

There were the pretty American girls and their marvellously young-looking mammas, both out-Frenching the French in their efforts to look Parisian; there were rows of fat, placid, jewel-laden Argentine mothers, each with a watchful eye on her black-eyed, volcanically calm, be-powdered daughter; and there were the buyers, miraculously dressy in next week\'s styles in suits and hats—of the old-girl type most of them, alert, self-confident, capable.

They usually returned to their hotels at six, limping a little, dog-tired; but at sight of the brightly lighted, gay hotel foyer they would straighten up like war-horses scenting battle and achieve an effective entrance from the doorway to the lift.

In all that big, busy foyer Sophy Gold herself was the one person distinctly out of the picture. One did not know where to place her. To begin with, a woman as irrevocably, irredeemably ugly as Sophy was an anachronism in Paris. She belonged to the gargoyle period. You found yourself speculating on whether it was her mouth or her nose that made her so devastatingly plain, only to bring up at her eyes and find that they alone were enough to wreck any ambitions toward beauty. You knew before you saw it that her hair would be limp and straggling.

You sensed without a glance at them that her hands would be bony, with unlovely knuckles.

The Fates, grinning, had done all that. Her Chicago tailor and milliner had completed the work. Sophy had not been in Paris ten minutes before she noticed that they were wearing \'em long and full. Her coat was short and her skirt scant. Her hat was small. The Paris windows were full of large and graceful black velvets of the Lillian Russell school.

"May I sit here?"

Sophy looked up into the plump, pink, smiling face of one of those very women of the buyer type on whom she had speculated ten minutes before—a good-natured face with shrewd, twinkling eyes. At sight of it you forgave her her skittish white-kid-topped shoes.

"Certainly," smiled Sophy, and moved over a bit on the little French settee.

The plump woman sat down heavily. In five minutes Sophy was conscious she was being stared at surreptitiously. In ten minutes she was uncomfortably conscious of it. In eleven minutes she turned her head suddenly and caught the stout woman\'s eyes fixed on her, with just the baffled, speculative expression she had expected to find in them. Sophy Gold had caught that look in many women\'s eyes. She smiled grimly now.

"Don\'t try it," she said, "It\'s no use."

The pink, plump face flushed pinker.

"Don\'t try—"

"Don\'t try to convince yourself that if I wore my hair differently, or my collar tighter, or my hat larger, it would make a difference in my looks. It wouldn\'t. It\'s hard to believe that I\'m as homely as I look, but I am. I\'ve watched women try to dress me in as many as eleven mental changes of costume before they gave me up."

"But I didn\'t mean—I beg your pardon—you mustn\'t think—"

"Oh, that\'s all right! I used to struggle, but I\'m used to it now. It took me a long time to realise that this was my real face and the only kind I could ever expect to have."

The plump woman\'s kindly face grew kinder.

"But you\'re really not so—"

"Oh, yes, I am. Upholstering can\'t change me. There are various kinds of homely women—some who are hideous in blue maybe, but who soften up in pink. Then there\'s the one you read about, whose features are lighted up now and then by one of those rare, sweet smiles that make her plain face almost beautiful. But once in a while you find a woman who is ugly in any colour of the rainbow; who is ugly smiling or serious, talking or in repose, hair down low or hair done high—just plain dyed-in-the-wool, sewed-in-the-seam homely. I\'m that kind. Here for a visit?"

"I\'m a buyer," said the plump woman.

"Yes; I thought so. I\'m the lingerie and infants\'-wear buyer for Schiff, Chicago."

"A buyer!" The plump woman\'s eyes jumped uncontrollably again to Sophy Gold\'s scrambled features. "Well! My name\'s Miss Morrissey—Ella Morrissey. Millinery for Abelman\'s, Pittsburgh. And it\'s no snap this year, with the shops showing postage-stamp hats one day and cart-wheels the next. I said this morning that I envied the head of the tinware department. Been over often?"

Sophy made the shamefaced confession of the novice: "My first trip."

The inevitable answer came:

"Your first! Really! This is my twentieth crossing. Been coming over twice a year for ten years. If there\'s anything I can tell you, just ask. The first buying trip to Paris is hard until you know the ropes. Of course you love this town?"

Sophy Gold sat silent a moment, hesitating. Then she turned a puzzled face toward Miss Morrissey.

"What do people mean when they say they love Paris?"

Ella Morrissey stared. Then a queer look came into her face—a pitying sort of look. The shrewd eyes softened. She groped for words.

"When I first came over here, ten years ago, I—well, it would have been easier to tell you then. I don\'t know—there\'s something about Paris—something in the atmosphere—something in the air. It—it makes you do foolish things. It makes you feel queer and light and happy. It\'s nothing you can put your finger on and say \'That\'s it!\' But it\'s there."

"Huh!" grunted Sophy Gold. "I suppose I could save myself a lot of trouble by saying that I feel it; but I don\'t. I simply don\'t react to this town. The only things I really like in Paris are the Tomb of Napoleon, the Seine at night, and the strawberry tart you get at Vian\'s. Of course the parks and boulevards are a marvel, but you can\'t expect me to love a town for that. I\'m no landscape gardener."

That pitying look deepened in Miss Morrissey\'s eyes.

"Have you been out in the evening? The restaurants! The French women! The life!"

Sophy Gold caught the pitying look and interpreted it without resentment; but there was perhaps an added acid in her tone when she spoke.

"I\'m here to buy—not to play. I\'m thirty years old, and it\'s taken me ten years to work my way up to foreign buyer. I\'ve worked. And I wasn\'t handicapped any by my beauty. I\'ve made up my mind that I\'m going to buy the smoothest-moving line of French lingerie and infants\' wear that Schiff Brothers ever had."

Miss Morrissey checked her.

"But, my dear girl, haven\'t you been round at all?"

"Oh, a little; as much as a woman can go round alone in Paris—even a homely woman. But I\'ve been disappointed every time. The noise drives me wild, to begin with. Not that I\'m not used to noise. I am. I can stand for a town that roars, like Chicago. But this city yelps. I\'ve been going round to the restaurants a little. At noon I always picked the restaurant I wanted, so long as I had to pay for the lunch of the commissionnaire who was with me anyway. Can you imagine any man at home letting a woman pay for his meals the way those shrimpy Frenchmen do?

"Well, the restaurants were always jammed full of Americans. The men of the party would look over the French menu in a helpless sort of way, and then they\'d say: \'What do you say to a nice big steak with French-fried potatoes?\' The waiter would give them a disgusted look and put in the order. They might just as well have been eating at a quick lunch place. As for the French women, every time I picked what I took to be a real Parisienne coming toward me I\'d hear her say as she passed: \'Henry, I\'m going over to the Galerie Lafayette. I\'ll meet you at the American Express at twelve. And, Henry, I think I\'ll need some more money.\'"

Miss Ella Morrissey\'s twinkling eyes almost disappeared in wrinkles of laughter; but Sophy Gold was not laughing. As she talked she gazed grimly ahead at the throng that shifted and glittered and laughed and chattered all about her.

"I stopped work early one afternoon and went over across the river. Well! They may be artistic, but they all looked as though they needed a shave and a hair-cut and a square meal. And the girls!"

Ella Morrissey raised a plump, protesting palm.

"Now look here, child, Paris isn\'t so much a city as a state of mind. To enjoy it you\'ve got to forget you\'re an American. Don\'t look at it from a Chicago, Illinois, viewpoint. Just try to imagine you\'re a mixture of Montmartre girl, Latin Quarter model and duchess from the Champs élysées. Then you\'ll get it."

"Get it!" retorted Sophy Gold. "If I could do that I wouldn\'t be buying lingerie and infants\' wear for Schiffs\'. I\'d be crowding Duse and Bernhardt and Mrs. Fiske off the boards."

Miss Morrissey sat silent and thoughtful, rubbing one fat forefinger slowly up and down her knee. Suddenly she turned.

"Don\'t be angry—but have you ever been in love?"

"Look at me!" replied Sophy Gold simply. Miss Morrissey reddened a little. "As head of the lingerie section I\'ve selected trousseaus for I don\'t know how many Chicago brides; but I\'ll never have to decide whether I\'ll have pink or blue ribbons for my own."

With a little impulsive gesture Ella Morrissey laid one hand on the shoulder of her new acquaintance.

"Come on up and visit me, will you? I made them give me an inside room, away from the noise. Too many people down here. Besides, I\'d like to take off this armour-plate of mine and get comfortable. When a girl gets as old and fat as I am—"

"There are some letters I ought to get out," Sophy Gold protested feebly.

"Yes; I know. We all have; but there\'s such a thing as overdoing this duty to the firm. You get up at six to-morrow morning and slap off those letters. They\'ll come easier and sound less tired."

They made for the lift; but at its very gates:

"Hello, little girl!" cried a masculine voice; and a detaining hand was laid on Ella Morrissey\'s plump shoulder.

That lady recognised the voice and the greeting before she turned to face their source. Max Tack, junior partner in the firm of Tack Brothers, Lingerie and Infants\' Wear, New York, held out an eager hand.

"Hello, Max!" said Miss Morrissey not too cordially. "My, aren\'t you dressy!"

He was undeniably dressy—not that only, but radiant with the self-confidence born of good looks, of well-fitting evening clothes, of a fresh shave, of glistening nails. Max Tack, of the hard eye and the soft smile, of the slim figure and the semi-bald head, of the flattering tongue and the business brain, bent his attention full on the very plain Miss Sophy Gold.

"Aren\'t you going to introduce me?" he demanded.

Miss Morrissey introduced them, buyer fashion—names, business connection, and firms.

"I knew you were Miss Gold," began Max Tack, the honey-tongued. "Some one pointed you out to me yesterday. I\'ve been trying to meet you ever since."

"I hope you haven\'t neglected your business," said Miss Gold without enthusiasm.

Max Tack leaned closer, his tone lowered.

"I\'d neglect it any day for you. Listen, little one: aren\'t you going to take dinner with me some evening?"

Max Tack always called a woman "Little one." It was part of his business formula. He was only one of the wholesalers who go to Paris yearly ostensibly to buy models, but really to pay heavy diplomatic court to those hundreds of women buyers who flock to that city in the interests of their firms. To entertain those buyers who were interested in goods such as he manufactured in America; to win their friendship; to make them feel under obligation at least to inspect his line when they came to New York—that was Max Tack\'s mission in Paris. He performed it admirably.

"What evening?" he said now. "How about to-morrow?" Sophy Gold shook her head. "Wednesday then? You stick to me and you\'ll see Paris. Thursday?"

"I\'m buying my own dinners," said Sophy Gold.

Max Tack wagged a chiding forefinger at her.

"You little rascal!" No one had ever called Sophy Gold a little rascal before. "You stingy little rascal! Won\'t give a poor lonesome fellow an evening\'s pleasure, eh! The theatre? Want to go slumming?"

He was feeling his way now, a trifle puzzled. Usually he landed a buyer at the first shot. Of course you had to use tact and discrimination. Some you took to supper and to the naughty revues.

Occasionally you found a highbrow one who preferred the opera. Had he not sat through Parsifal the week before? And nearly died! Some wanted to begin at Tod Sloan\'s bar and work their way up through Montmartre, ending with breakfast at the Pré Catalan. Those were the greedy ones. But this one!

"What\'s she stalling for—with that face?" he asked himself.

Sophy Gold was moving toward the lift, the twinkling-eyed Miss Morrissey with her.

"I\'m working too hard to play. Thanks, just the same. Good-night."

Max Tack, his face blank, stood staring up at them as the lift began to ascend.

"Trazyem," said Miss Morrissey grandly to the lift man.

"Third," replied that linguistic person, unimpressed.

It turned out to be soothingly quiet and cool in Ella Morrissey\'s room. She flicked on the light and turned an admiring glance on Sophy Gold.

"Is that your usual method?"

"I haven\'t any method," Miss Gold seated herself by the window. "But I\'ve worked too hard for this job of mine to risk it by putting myself under obligations to any New York firm. It simply means that you\'ve got to buy their goods. It isn\'t fair to your firm."

Miss Morrissey was busy with hooks and eyes and strings. Her utterance was jerky but concise. At one stage of her disrobing she breathed a great sigh of relief as she flung a heavy garment from her.

"There! That\'s comfort! Nights like this I wish I had that back porch of our flat to sit on for just an hour. Ma has flower boxes all round it, and I bought one of those hammock couches last year. When I come home from the store summer evenings I peel and get into my old blue-and-white kimono and lie there, listening to the girl stirring the iced tea for supper, and knowing that Ma has a platter of her swell cold fish with egg sauce!" She relaxed into an armchair. "Tell me, do you always talk to men that way?"

Sophy Gold was still staring out the open window.

"They don\'t bother me much, as a rule."

"Max Tack isn\'t a bad boy. He never wastes much time on me. I don\'t buy his line. Max is all business. Of course he\'s somethi............