The warmth about her heart made it beat a little faster. She opened
the door of her wardrobe when she found herself in her bedroom. The
dress hung modestly in its corner shrouded from the penetration of
London fogs by clean sheeting. It was only white and as simple as
she knew how to order it, but Mademoiselle had taken her to a young
French person who knew exactly what she was doing in all cases,
and because the girl had the supple lines of a wood nymph and the
eyes of young antelope she had evolved that which expressed her
as a petal expresses its rose. Robin locked her door and took the
dress down and found the silk stockings and slippers which belonged
to it. She put them all on standing before her long mirror and
having left no ungiven last touch she fell a few steps backward and
looked at herself, turning and balancing herself as a bird might
have done. She turned lightly round and round.
"Yes. I AM--" she said. "I am--very!"
The next instant she laughed at herself outright.
"How silly! How silly!" she said. "Almost EVERYBODY is--more
or less! I wonder if I remember the new steps." For she had been
taught the new steps--the new walking and swayings and pauses and
sudden swirls and swoops. And her new dress was as short as other
fashionable girls' dresses were, but in her case revealed a haunting
delicacy of contour and line.
So before her mirror she danced alone and as she danced her lips
parted and her breast rose and fell charmingly, and her eyes
lighted and glowed as any girl's might have done or as a joyous
girl nymph's might have lighted as she danced by a pool in her
forest seeing her loveliness mirrored there.
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