Had any one been behind her to look over
her shoulder into the glass, he would have seen the reflection in that
mirror of one of the prettiest children the wide world could show;
especially childish she looked to-night with her dark hair piled high on
her head, her eyes wide with wonder, her neck and shoulders so delicately
white and soft. Behind her, on the bed, was the dress, on the dingy carpet
a pair of shoes of silver tissue, the loveliest things she had ever had.
They were reflected in the mirror, little blobs of silver, and as she saw
them the colour mounted still higher in her cheeks. She had no right to
them; she had not paid for them. They were the first things that she had
ever, in all her life, bought on credit. Neither her father nor her mother
knew anything about them, but she had seen them in Harriott's shop-window
and had simply not been able to resist them.
If, after all, she was to dance with Him, that made anything right. Were
she sent to prison because she could not pay for them it would not matter.
She had done the only possible thing.
And so she looked into the mirror and saw the dark glitter in her hair and
the red in her cheeks and the whiteness of her shoulders and the silver
blobs of the little shoes, and she was happy--happy with an almost fearful
ecstasy.
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