Out of her fancies the desire for flowers to wear that night
emerged definitely and became poignant; she began to feel that it
might be particularly important to have them. "This might be the
night!" She was still at the age to dream that the night of any
dance may be the vital point in destiny. No matter how
commonplace or disappointing other dance nights have been this
one may bring the great meeting. The unknown magnifico may be
there.
Alice was almost unaware of her own reveries in which this being
appeared--reveries often so transitory that they developed and
passed in a few seconds. And in some of them the being was not
wholly a stranger; there were moments when he seemed to be
composed of recognizable fragments of young men she knew--a smile
she had liked, from one; the figure of another, the hair of
another--and sometimes she thought he might be concealed, so to
say, within the person of an actual acquaintance, someone she had
never suspected of being the right seeker for her, someone who
had never suspected that it was she who "waited" for him.
Anything might reveal them to each other: a look, a turn of the
head, a singular word--perhaps some flowers upon her breast or in
her hand.
She wiped the dishes slowly, concluding the operation by dropping
a saucer upon the floor and dreamily sweeping the fragments under
the stove.
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