Joy went to look at herself in the mirror. Her beauty was not tangible, and she had never made an inventory of its assets and liabilities. It was not so much her hair, which had started to be light brown and rippled into purest gold, the inimitable shade that less fortunately endowed women are prone to be catty about, or her complexion which needed none of Sarah’s artifices, as it was her eyes and the expression they lent her face. It seemed as if her name had marked her; her eyes, the colour of summer skies with the laughter of the sun caught up in them, bathed her face in radiance.
Most pretty girls never tire of admiring what the mirror gives back to them, but Joy had not had enough admiration in her life to assure her of the necessary self-appreciation. She put an experimental hand on Sarah’s tools. There was blue shadowing to go beneath the eyes, and sticky black stuff to make one’s lashes look like an advertisement of Lash-Brow-ing——
“Don’t put on any of that stuff now!” said Jerry. “Wait till evening, and I’ll help you.”
Joy began to comb her hair, singing lightly one of the songs the orchestra had played the evening before.
“I was so young—you were so beautiful—
I knew you couldn’t be true-ue—
Each time I looked at you my heart grew sad—
’Twas then I realized why men go mad—
You made me give you all the love I had—”
She stopped, suddenly aware of the other girl’s riveted attention. Jerry’s careless, carefree attitude had slipped away entirely, as she stood listening, her eyes lancets of concentration, her upper teeth pulling in her under lip.