The evening came; when I arrived and went to the waiting-room, to take off my mantle, I found the girl there already. She was dressed in pure white, with her great white arms and shoulders showing, and her bright hair glittering in the candle-light, and the white rose fastened at her breast. She looked like a queen. I said “Good-evening,” and turned away quickly to the glass to arrange my old black scarf across my old black dress.
Then I felt a hand touch my hair.
“Stand still,” she said.
I looked in the glass. She had taken the white rose from her breast, and was fastening it in my hair.
“How nice dark hair is; it sets off flowers so.” She stepped back and looked at me. “It looks much better there!”
I turned round.
“You are so beautiful to me,” I said.
“Y-e-s,” she said, with her slow Colonial drawl; “I’m so glad.”
We stood looking at each other.
Then they came in and swept us away to dance. All the evening we did not come near to each other. Only once, as she passed, she smiled at me.