It was some kind of hallucination, she told herself. It had to be. You're Mary-Jean Wilson. You haven't changed. She moved away from the mirror uncertainly. The glorious apparition moved away, inside the mirror. She moved back. It moved back. She touched a hand to her bare throat. It touched a hand to its bare throat.
Mary-Jean Wilson, she thought. Cross out Mary-Jean Wilson. I'm a new edition. I'm ... I'm ... tears welled in her eyes. There wasn't any doubt about it: she was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, in real life, in the movies, in the slick magazines, anywhere. She had been changed utterly. Transformed. Metamorphosed. Into a stunning, radiant creature.
The happiness balm?
But of course. It had to be the happiness balm.
Wait until Tom saw her ... held her....
Tom?
She shuddered. How did you tell your husband? How did you reveal yourself? Here's the new me, Tom? How do you like it? How—how do you like the merchandise I bought from a peddler who came around in the afternoon.
She couldn't tell Tom. Not now, not yet. She wouldn't know how to approach him. Probably, he wouldn't even believe her. He'd never accept this beautiful creature as his mundane little wife. Never—
Then what did you do? Run away?
But she had nothing against Tom. Plain, steady Tom with his normal likes and dislikes, his pillar-of-the-community attitude, his pipe-smoking solidness, his liking for carpet-slippers and the newspaper after supper. She couldn't desert Tom.