And yet, in spite of its monotony, humanity is perennially interesting to itself. Therefore among the strenuous, the hurrying, and the anxious-eyed, one girl loitered on dilatory foot from wide window to wide window.
“Girl” seems an inadequate word to describe Lena Quincy. It may be applied to any youthful feminine person, and Lena, in spite of her carefully-groomed shabbiness, was by no means one of the herd. She affected one like a bit of Tiffany glass, shimmering, iridescent, ethereal; and no ugliness in her surroundings could take away that impression.
Every one who looked at her at all looked twice. She had grown so used to this tribute that it hardly affected her unless it came from one who merited her interest in return.
Now she was wandering from one to another of the ladies with the waxen faces, the waxen hands and the wooden hearts, who gazed back unmoved from behind their plate-glass; though it was not the fixed and amiable smiles of the lay-figures that caught her attention, but rather the curious way in which this one’s braid was laid on the gown, or the new device in buttons, there beyond.
Now she turned and studied the human flux in front. She was not shopping, save in sweet imagination. This was her theater, and she was fain to make the show last as long as possible. Her absorbent gaze saw everything. Yet it was selective too, for it passed swiftly over the chaff of the shabby and fixed itself on the wheat of the properly gowned. Sometimes she wove romances about her swiftly-disappearing actors, romances not of heart and soul but of garments, of splendors and of money; but even such entrancing tissues of her brain vanished like pricked soap-bubbles when there passed in the body one of those select few whose skirts proclaimed perfection. Could dreams stand against reality? Yet the dreams were blissful, though, when they were gone, the girl was left steeped in the bitterness of envy.
It is said that there is a consolation in being well-dressed that religion itself can not afford. It is to be remembered that there is also the pharisaism which always forms a hard shell about every kernel of religion; and the pharisaism of the correct costume is the most complacent of all forms of self-righteousness. Lena’s lips grew positively pale as she saw it pass, drawing its rustling petticoats close to its side. She hungered and thirsted for this form of righteousness.
It was early April, and there was a savage nip in the air, for Winter shook his fist at the world long after he dared to come out of his lair. Spring refused to sit in his lap for more than an instant, but leaped from that affectionate position, ashamed of her intimacy with the hoary sinner, and the buds swelled slowly and swelled exceeding small.
Other women hurried, but Lena did not feel the cold except when she saw a set of magnificent Russian sables with a cordial invitation to “Buy now”. Her eyes suddenly filled with tears at her own impotence. Why had God created her such as she was and then denied her the perquisites of her desires? It was as though nature should make the heart of a rose and should leave off all the out-shaken wealth of petals, whose reflected lights and shadows make the flower’s heart lovely.
With the mist clearing from her eyes Lena walked onward to the next big sheet of glass, and looked through a wealth of Easter hats and bonnets at the mirror that was meant to manifold their charms. She did not see the millinery, but there was comfort in the really good glass, not like her parody at home which cast a pale green tinge over a distorted image.
On Lena nature had really spent herself. The very texture of her skin made the fingers itch to caress its transparent delicacy that let through a tender flush. Every curve of her body suggested hidden beauty, and the way she turned her head on her shoulders left one feeling how music and painting fall short of expressing the loveliest loveliness. But, having accomplished a miracle, fate had left it without a meaning and thrown it on an ash heap. No wonder that it resented its position.