John calls a
'knock-out.' To be sure, I've only met her twice, but I think she's
absolutely thrilling. She's so perfectly simple. She's never--don't you
know--_being_ anything. She just is. And she thinks we're all so
wonderful--clever and witty and beautiful and all that--just honestly
thinks so, that she'll make everybody feel warm and nice inside, and
they'll be sure to like her. Of course, when she gets over feeling that
way about us...."

"She's got a real eye for clothes, too," said Frederica. "We've been
shopping. Well then, I'm going to tell Rodney to go ahead and take the
house."

Rose was consulted about it of course, though consulted is perhaps not
the right word to use. She was taken to see it, anyway, and asked if she
liked it, a question in the nature of the case superfluous. One might as
well have asked Cinderella if she liked the gown the fairy godmother had
provided her with for the prince's ball.

It didn't occur to her to ask how much the rent would be, nor would the
fact have had any value for her as an illuminant, because she would have
had no idea whether six thousand dollars was a half or a hundredth of
her future husband's income. The new house was just a part--as so many
of the other things that had happened to her since that night when
Rodney had sent her flowers and taken her to the theater and two
restaurants in Martin's biggest limousine had been parts--of a
breath-arresting fairy story.

It takes a consciousness of resistance overcome to make anything feel
quite real, and Rose, during the first three months after their return
to town in the autumn, encountered no resistance whatever. It was all,
as Frederica had said, oiled. She was asked to make no effort. The whole
thing just happened, exactly as it had happened to Cinderella. All she
had to do was to watch with wonder-wide eyes, and feel that she was,
deliciously, being floated along.

The conclusion Frederica and Violet had come to about her chance for
social success was amply justified by the event, and it is probable that
Violet had put her finger on the mainspring of it. One needn't assume
that there were not other young women at the prince's ball as beautiful
as Cinderella, and other gowns, perhaps, as marvelous as the one
provided by the fairy godmother. The godmother's greatest gift, I should
say, though the fable lays little stress on it, was a capacity for
unalloyed delight. No other young girl, beautiful as she may have b