"We're not dressed. We shouldn't have come," trying to ride down her
sense of misery.
"I'm dressed in all the cloth of gold you have woven for me," quoth Zoe,
in mock grandiloquence, still pitched to her exultant key and in all
her youthful capacity for it, full of self.
There were enamel-backed brushes with deep bristles that plowed her hair
out into dust of gold, and a finely wrought amber comb which she ran
through the fluff, striking an attitude.
"She walks in splendor like the night--"
"Zoe, you're losing your head."
"Splendor! This is me. Marble--terraces--rugs that slide--only I
want peacocks--that strut--and tails that open like fans
and--starlight--him--"
"Who?"
"Silly darling--nobody--the world--life."
There was no restraining her. She smoothed her mother's hair only to
kiss it awry again. She fluffed a fragrant cloud of powder along her
neck. Trilled at a drowsy canary in a wicker cage. Stretched herself in
the conscious pose of a Recamier on the lacy mound of a chaise-longue,
and finally followed her mother into the drawing-room, entirely at ease
in the straight blue frock.
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