lso, as if to
punish her own foolishness in wishing, she accepted such goods as the
gods had mischievously provided.

"You've said yes, and now you must stick to it," she told herself in
preparation for a wave of regret, but to her surprise the day wore on
and the expected tide of repentance did not set in.

The girl realized that she was looking forward, actually looking
forward to the evening. It would be like walking wide awake into the
Hall of Dreams to put on a dress beautiful enough for a princess, and
eat ice-cream and big red strawberries in a house "cool as snow"
instead of sitting in her hot bedroom practising on the hired
typewriter or panting on her bed, dead to everything in the world
except a palm-leaf fan.

When she had been a little girl, invited to children's parties, it had
not been of the slightest importance whether she liked the child or
not. The party was the thing. Now history was repeating itself in her
nature. The blank monotony of life and work had given back that
childish eagerness for fun, no matter whence it came. She did not care
whose ice-cream and strawberries she was going to eat, provided she
got them and they were good. Besides, it would be like finding an old
lost friend to look into her mirror (it was cracked and turned one's
complexion pale green, with iridescent spots; but that was a detail)
and see a bare-necked, white-armed girl in evening dress.

There was a new way of doing the hair which Win had noticed on a
smiling wax beauty in Peter Rolls's Window-World and had dimly wished
to try for herself. Only dimly, because if her hair were glossy and
trim it suited those plain, ninety-eight-cent shirt waists better than
the elaborate fashions affected by Lily Leavitt and one or two of the
more successful tigresses who cheaply copied expensive customers. Now
there was an incentive for the experiment and Win laughed at the
eagerness with which she looked forward to the moment of making it,
laughed patronizingly, as she might have laughed at a child's longing
for Christmas.

"Anyhow, it's something that I _can_ laugh," she thought, recalling,
as she often did, her boast to Peter Rolls, Jr. "And I haven't cried
yet!"

She had not guessed how vividly the sight of the Moon dress and
putting it on would bring Mr. Balm of Gilead to her mind. But as she
stood gazing into the greenish glass, with her hair very successfully
done in the new way and the Moon gown shimmering night-blue and