She had wished for a change, "anything for a change," and presto! her wish had been suddenly granted by fate. Rather spitefully granted, it would seem, because to go to a "party" with Lily Leavitt was the very last thing she would have chosen. And spitefully, also, as if to punish her own foolishness in wishing, she accepted such goods as the gods had mischievously provided.
"You've said yes, and now you must stick to it," she told herself in preparation for a wave of regret, but to her surprise the day wore on and the expected tide of repentance did not set in.
The girl realized that she was looking forward, actually
looking forward to the evening. It would be like walking wide awake into the Hall of Dreams to put on a dress beautiful enough for a princess, and eat ice-cream and big red strawberries in a house "cool as snow" instead of sitting in her hot bedroom practising on the hired typewriter or panting on her bed, dead to everything in the world except a palm-leaf fan.
When she had been a little girl, invited to children's parties, it had not been of the slightest importance whether she liked the child or not. The party was the thing. Now history was repeating itself in her nature. The blank monotony of life and work had given back that childish eagerness for fun, no matter whence it came. She did not care whose ice-cream and strawberries she was going to eat, provided she got them and they were good. Besides, it would be like finding an old lost friend to look into her mirror (it was cracked and turned one's complexion pale green, with iridescent spots; but that was a detail) and see a bare-necked, white-armed girl in evening dress.
There was a new way of doing the hair which Win had noticed on a smiling wax beauty in Peter Rolls's Window-World and had dimly wished to try for herself. Only dimly, because if her hair were glossy and trim it suited those plain, ninety-eight-cent shirt waists better than the elaborate fashions affected by Lily Leavitt and one or two of the more successful tigresses who cheaply copied expensive customers. Now there was an incentive for the experiment and Win laughed at the eagerness with which she looked forward to the moment of making it, laughed patronizingly, as she might have laughed at a child's longing for Christmas.
"
Anyhow, it's something that I can laugh," she thought, recalling, as she often did, her boast to Peter Rolls, Jr. "And I haven't cried yet!"
She had not guessed how vividly the sight of the Moon dress and putting it on would bring Mr. Balm of Gilead to her mind. But as she stood gazing into the greenish glass, with her hair very successfully done in the new way and the Moon gown shimmering night-blue and silver, it was as if Peter Rolls came and looked over her shoulder, their eyes meeting in the mirror.
Yes, she saw him for an instant as clearly as that. He was there. He was her friend, the nicest, most altogether delightful man she had ever seen; the one she knew best and needed most, though their actual acquaintanceship was but a few days old. The kind blue eyes were true and brave, and said: "I dare you not to believe in me, as I believe in you!"