cough and staggered forward as though he had received a healthy blow from and to the rear. The liquid burned inside him like liquid fire.

Gasping, he beat his chest for relief and steadied himself against the wall with a trembling hand. The dizziness that he had only just gotten rid of, returned. He closed his eyes in the hope that it would pass.

His eyes were still closed when the scream issued piercingly from across the room. Opening them, he glanced across to where the models appeared and almost wished he hadn't bothered. It was too insane.

Toffee had evidently found the dress she wanted, an ethereal affair consisting of a couple of scraps of filmy stuff arranged to make its wearer look like nothing so much as a gift-wrapped Diana out for the kill. As Parisian dresses went, Marc supposed that this flimsy confection was only a little bit worse than most, but it had one glaring flaw which almost anyone—anyone, that is, but Toffee—would have noticed at a glance; the dress was still on the model. Toffee, however, was not deterred, not even by the girl's desperate screams. She was industriously disrobing the poor creature before the startled eyes of the other customers.

Marc, forgetting his dizziness, shoved himself away from the wall and ran forward. "Stop!" he yelled. "You can't do that!"

Toffee cast him a fleeting glance over her shoulder, but did not stop her frantic efforts with the illusive dress and the struggling model.

"It's difficult all right," she shot back, "but I think I can manage."

"Madam, please!" the model shrieked, her air of aloof stateliness demolished. "Oh, please!"

From a curtained doorway, a small dark woman, the manageress of the department, looked out and emitted a thin cry of disbelief. The model, now stripped to the waist, was hugging herself in a paroxysm of horror. Throwing back the curtains, the manageress ran forward.

"Madam!" she cried. "Madam! You really mustn't!" She hastened to Toffee's side and tried to pull her away from the terrified girl. "If you like the dress, please step back to the fitting room."

"Step back to the fitting room yourself!" Toffee snapped. "And don't call me madam!"

"But the model...."

"She'll have to take her chances," Toffee 

 Prev. P 18/64 next