They moved off unconsciously, and Alexina remained alone near one of
the long windows behind the receiving line; but she felt secure in her
insignificance and quite content to gaze uninterruptedly at the greatest
function she had ever seen. After the bitter hard work, the long
monotonies, the brief terrible excitements, of the past four years, and
the depressed febrile atmosphere of Paris during the last year when avions
dropped their bombs nearly every night, and Big Bertha struck terror to
each quarter in turn, this gay and gorgeous scene recalled one's most
extravagant dreams of fairy-land and Arabia; and Alexina felt like a very
young girl. Even the almost constant sensation of fatigue, mental and
bodily, fell from her as she forgot that she had worked from nine until
six for three years in her oeuvre, often walking the miles to and from her
hotel or pension to avoid the crowded trains; the distasteful food; the
tremors that had shaken even her tempered soul when the flashing of the
German guns, drawing ever nearer, could be seen at night on the horizon.
And Paris had been so dark!
She reveled almost sensuously in the excessiveness of the contrast, quite
unconcerned that her white gown was several years out of date. For that
matter there were few gowns, in these vast rooms, of this year's fashion.
Although Paris had begun to dance wildly the day the Armistice was
declared, not only in sheer reaction from a long devotion to its ideal
of duty, but that the American officers should have the opportunity to
discover the loveliness and charm of the French maiden, the women had not
yet found time to renew their wardrobes, and the only gowns in the room
less than four years old were worn by the newly arrived Americans of the
Peace Commission and the ladies of the Embassy.
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