Robin’s colour began to come back.
“It’s not what usually happens to girls in situations,” she said.
“Her grace herself isn’t what usually happens,” said Dowie. “There is no one like her for high wisdom and kindness.”
Having herself awakened to the truth of this confidence-inspiring fact, Robin felt herself supported by it. One knew what far-sighted perception and clarity of experienced vision this one woman had gained during her many years of life. If she had elected to do this thing she had seen her path clear before her and was not offering a gift which awkward chance might spoil or snatch away from the hand held out to receive it. A curious slow warmth began to creep about Robin’s heart and in its mounting gradually fill her being. It was true she had been taught to dance, to move about and speak prettily. She had been taught a great many things which seemed to be very carefully instilled into her mind and body without any special reason. She had not been aware that Lord Coombe and Mademoiselle Vallé had directed and discussed her training as if it had been that of a young royal person whose equipment must be a flawless thing. If the Dowager Duchess of Darte had wished to present her at Court some fair morning she would have known the length of the train she must wear, where she must make her curtseys and to whom and to what depth, how to kiss the royal hand, and how to manage her train when she retired from the presence. When she had been taught this she had asked Mademoiselle Vallé if the training was part of every girl’s education and Mademoiselle had answered,
“It is best to know everything—even ceremonials which may or may not prove of use. It all forms part of a background and prevents one from feeling unfamiliar with customs.”
When she had passed the young pairs in the streets she had found an added interest in them because of this background. She could imagine them dancing together in fairy ball rooms whose lights and colours her imagination was obliged to construct for her out of its own fabric; she knew what the girls would look like if they went to a Drawing Room and she often wondered if they would feel shy when the page spread out their lovely peacock tails for them and left them to their own devices. It was mere Nature that she should have pondered and pondered and sometimes unconsciously longed to feel herself part of the flood of being sweeping past her as she stood apart on the brink of the river.
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.