Winona waited breathless.  She had tortured herself with the possible consequences of this adventure.  She had even conceived a clerk of forbidding aspect who would now austerely reply:  “Woman, how dare you come in here and talk that way?  You who have never worn anything but black cotton stockings, or lisle at the worst, and whose most daring footwear has been a neat Oxford tie with low heels, such as respectable women wear?  Full well you know that a love for the sort of finery you now describe—­and reveal—­is why girls go wrong.  And yet you come shamelessly in here—­no, it is too much!  You forget yourself!  Leave the place at once!”

Sometimes this improvisation had concluded with a homily in kinder words, in which she would be entreated to go forth and try to be a better woman.  And sometimes, but not often, she had decided that a shoe clerk, no matter his age, would take her request as a mere incident in the day’s trade.  Other women wore such things, and perforce must buy them in a public manner.  She had steeled her nerve to the ordeal, and now she flushed with a fine new confidence, for the clerk merely said, “Certainly, madam”—­in the later shops of Newbern they briefly called you madam—­and with a kind of weary, professional politeness fell to the work of equipping her.  A joyous relief succeeded her panic.  She not only declared a moment later that her instep was far too high, but fitted at last in a slipper of suitable shade she raised her skirt again as she posed before a mirror that reached the floor.  Winona was coming on.  Had come!

* * * * *

Late that afternoon, while a last bit of chiffon was being tacked to a dancing frock which her mother had been told to make as fancy as she pleased, Winona hastily scribbled in her journal:  “Am I of a gay disposition?  Too gay, too volatile?  No matter!  It is an agreeable defect where one retains discretion sufficient for its regulation.  This very night I am one of a party avowedly formed for pleasure, something my reflective mind would once have viewed with disapprobation.  But again no matter.  Perhaps I have been too analytical, too introspective.  Perhaps the war has confused my sense of spiritual values.  War is such a mistake!”

It was a flushed and sparkling Winona who later fluttered down the dull old stairs of the respectable Penniman home at the call of the waiting Wilbur Cowan.  Her dark hair was still plainly, though rather effectively, drawn about her small head—­she had definitely rebuffed the suggestion of her mother that it be marcelled—­but her wisp of a frock of bronze gossamer was revolutionary in the extreme.  Mrs. Penniman had at last been fancy in her dressmaking for her child, and now stood by to exclaim at her handiwork.  Winona, with surprising aplomb, bore the scrutiny of the family while she pulled long white gloves along her bare arms.  A feathered fan dangled from one of them.