She walked grimly to a long bench, seated herself, and placed her right foot firmly upon a pedestal, full in the gaze of a clerk who was far too young, she instantly perceived, for negotiations of this delicacy.
"I wish to purchase," she began through slightly relaxed lips, "a pair of satin dancing slippers like those in your window--high-heeled, one strap, and possibly with those jewelled buckles." She here paused for another breath, then continued tremendously: "Something in a shade to go with--with these!" With dainty brazenness the small hand at her knee obeyed an amazing command from her disordered brain and raised the neat brown skirt of Winona a full two inches, to reveal a slim ankle between which and an ogling world there gleamed but the thinnest veneer of tan silk.
Winona waited breathless.

She had tortured herself with the possible consequences of this adventure.

She had even conceived a clerk of forbidding aspect who would now austerely reply: "Woman, how dare you come in here and talk that way?
You who have never worn anything but black cotton stockings, or lisle at the worst, and whose most daring footwear has been a neat Oxford tie with low heels, such as respectable women wear?
Full well you know that a love for the sort of finery you now describe--and reveal--is why girls go wrong.

And yet you come shamelessly in here--no, it is too much! You forget yourself! Leave the place at once!" Sometimes this improvisation had concluded with a homily in kinder words, in which she would be entreated to go forth and try to be a better woman.

And sometimes, but not often, she had decided that a shoe clerk, no matter his age, would take her request as a mere incident in the day's trade.