She had the dog's soul--only she did not know it.
But the tears Fell down her cheeks, as she walked.
It looked so bright in there, so gay, with the sound of the music coming
in through the trees, and those women,--she had seen such women before;
sometimes in the winter nights, going home from the lacework, she had
stopped at the doors of the palaces, or of the opera house, when the
carriages were setting down their brilliant burdens; and sometimes on the
great feast days she had seen the people of the court going out to some
gala at the theatre, or some great review of troops, or some ceremonial
of foreign sovereigns; but she had never thought about them before; she
had never wondered whether velvet was better to wear than woollen serge,
or-diamonds lighter on the head than a little cap of linen.
But now--
Those women seemed to her so dazzling, so wondrously, so superhumanly
beautiful; they seemed like some of those new dahlia flowers, rose and
purple and gold, that outblazed the sun on the south border of her little
garden, and blanched all the soft color out of the homely roses, and
pimpernels, and sweet-williams, and double-stocks, that had bloomed
there ever since the days of Waterloo.
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