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The Professor looked quizzical. “I fear you will find it rather slow for cursory reading.” Then his responsive manner getting the best of him he added with considerable effect: “It will give me the greatest pleasure to make it clear if I can.”

Carlotta took him up at once,—but on a topic she did know something about as well as he, and stated it after her own fashion.

“I noticed that one of the discussions was about the peculiar costumes of certain tribes. Now, I never did understand why the darker races should introduce brilliant colors in dress so much more naturally and effectively than we do.”

The Professor instantly looked at her own dress and thought it very effective, in excellent taste. Carlotta continued:

“Now, with us color is often so arbitrary, mere fashion, the arrangement artificial, and when the thing is unbecoming you feel just like a martyr;” then, musingly, “but he won’t find that in me.”

Professor Cultus laughingly replied that “he really knew little about dress”—which was a fib for an anthropologist—but he supposed that “Dame Fashion was a capricious jade who often made her reputation by producing whims to meet the demand for something new; she had certainly been known to introduce what was hideous to many, simply to cover up the defects of a favorite patron.”