And when the girl wept for sheer delight, her mentor abused her and called her “Amanda,” and threatened her with dreadful reprisals unless she at once dried her eyes so that account could be duly taken of her. Of that stock-taking Gloria, re-creatrix, made no report to the subject. But this is what her gratified eyes saw.
A girl who held herself straight like an Indian and at ease like an animal. Where there had been sallow cheeks and an unwholesome flabbiness, the blood now shone in living pink through the lucent skin. The eyes were twice as large as when, the year before, Darcy had set out upon her determined beauty quest; but that was because the sagging lines beneath had disappeared and the eyes themselves, deep gray against clear white, were softly brilliant with health. Above the broad, smooth, candid forehead, the hair, so deep brown as to be almost black, played the happy truant in little waves and whorls as delicate and errant as blown smoke. The chin was set and firm—that was Andy Dunne’s discipline of soul and body. Above it the mouth smiled as naturally and unconsciously as it had formerly drooped, and two little dimples had come to live in the comers. Beyond and above the sheer formative change in the girl, she was so pulsating, so palpitant with life that, even as she stood quiescent before Gloria’s appraising eyes, she seemed to sway to some impalpable rhythm of the blood.
Yet Gloria was not wholly content. Hers was a wisdom that went deep. The re-created Darcy was a notable triumph, to be sure; looking upon her handiwork, Gloria found it good, nor did she doubt that others would find it good. But what of Darcy’s own bearing toward all these changes? Had she found herself? Until that question was settled in the affirmative, Gloria, re-creatrix, would not be satisfied.
“Just the same I’d like to see Jack Remsen or any other man look at her as she is now once without looking twice,” Gloria challenged the masculine world on behalf of her candidate for troubles and honors in the Great Open Lists.
Not men alone, but women as well, became addicted to that second look when Darcy passed their way in her new feathers. To her housemates the change, now forced upon their reluctant acceptance, was a matter of bewilderment if not of actual perturbation. Holcomb Lee, justified of his prophecies, exulted over the fact to such a point that Maud Raines felt it her womanly duty to fix a quarrel upon him. Undismayed, Holcomb took Darcy out to dinner. (“Never, never, never in the world would I have accepted, Gloria,” that dangerous young person assured her mentor, “if Maud Raines hadn’t been so catty and sneery about Holcomb’s drawing me.”) And Miss Raines hastily drowned her trumped-up grievance in a flood of alarmed tears. Even matter-of-fact Paul Wood, Helen’s betrothed, was impressed to the point of admiring comment.
“That chrysalis has hatched for fair,” said he.
“Hatched!” retorted Helen. “It didn’t hatch. It exploded!”
She and Maud wished to know, not without asperity, first why Darcy was getting her trousseau in advance of the season; next, why she was wearing it, item by item. Darcy was wearing the unaccustomed finery for a perfectly sound and feminine reason which she did not feel called upon to expound for the enlightenment of the two fiancées. She felt taller, straighter, and more independent in it. Moreover, she found it a business asset. Palpably affected by the richness and variety of her wardrobe, B. Riegel had proffered a guarantee basis of work which assured her future income. Thus the clothes bade fair to pay for themselves. But on alternate afternoons, Darcy, faithful to her training, garbed herself in rusty sweater, short skirt, and shapeless shoes, and did her stunt through Central Park. Her term at Andy’s academy having expired, she had taken on a new schedule of two hours per week: that being all, her preceptor assured her, that was needed for the preservation of her fitness “to jump in the ring and put ’em up with the Big Feller himself at the clang of the bell.” A slight exaggeration, but to Darcy, a grateful one.
With ever-growing approval, Gloria saw the girl accomplish that distinctively feminine feat known as “settling into your clothes.”
“My dear,” she remarked one day when the two had come in from a walk, “if Monty Veyze could see us together now, I wouldn’t have a chance with him.”