ve my brow, and I felt her breath, quick and hot, upon my cheek.
But the hair-cut turned out to be only the prelude to something better. Next morning I woke in Diana''s bed to find her dressed, and gazing at me with her old enigmatic smile. She said, ''You must get up. I have a treat for you today. Two treats, indeed. The first is in your bedroom.''
''A treat?'' I yawned; the word had lost its charge for me, rather. ''What is it, Diana?''
''It''s a suit.''
''What kind of suit?''
''A coming-out suit.''
''Coming-out -?''
I went at once.
Now, since my very first trouser-wearing days at Mrs Dendy''s, I had sported a wonderful variety of gentlemen''s suits. From the plain to the pantomimic, from the military to the effeminate, from the brown broad-cloth to the yellow velveteen - as soldier, sailor, valet, renter, errand-boy, dandy and comedy duke - I had worn them all, and worn them wisely and rather well. But the costume that awaited me in my bedroom that day in Diana''s villa in Felicity Place was the richest and the loveliest I ever wore; and I can remember it still, in all its marvellous parts.
There was a jacket and trousers of bone-coloured linen, and a waistcoat, slightly darker, with a silken back. These came wrapped together in a box lined with velvet; in a separate package I found three piqu6 shirts, each a shade lighter than the one before it, and each so fine and closely woven it shone like satin, or like the surface of a pearl.