And in her room, four floors above, Joan sat as long before her bureau, chin cradled on her slim, laced fingers, eyeing intently the face shown her by gas-light in the one true patch of the common, tarnished mirror.
When at length she rose, suddenly conscious of a heavy weariness, she lingered yet another long moment for one last fond look.
"It's true," she told herself with a little nod of conviction; "I am beautiful. She said I was ... he thinks I am ... I must be...."
XIX
For a long time Joan lay snug between the sheets, staring wide-eyed into the patch of lustrous blue morning sky framed by the window, reviewing this new and wonderful adventure of her heart from a point of view remote, detached, and critical. Thoughts recurred that in the excitement and ardour of the night had been passed over and neglected; and from them she derived a new, strange, and intoxicating sense of power.
Her first waking thought was as her last before sleeping: I am beautiful.
Her second, not I love him, but He loves me.
And her third grew out of the second: I can make him do what pleases me.
Yesterday a lowly supplicant at the shrine of love: today Love's very self, adored and desired by an erstwhile divinity now humbled to the level of humanity!