Page:Czechoslovak stories.pdf/153

 She continued to look at herself in the glass stupidly and without interest. She had a beautifully molded figure, but her inspection of self did not impress her pleasurably or otherwise, because her goal was attained—her purpose achieved. She possessed charming lips and large, clear eyes which she opened wide, as if in constant wonder. On her left hand shone the golden wedding-ring which proclaimed her a wife and which proved in her eyes that the object of her life was accomplished. She was married! Ah, well, at any rate she had no more worries about a husband such as she had at first heard expressed by her sisters when they had finished school and which she herself had felt when she donned her first long dress and realized that the most important period of her life had arrived.

What a bore it had been at that time! To be compelled to wear a constant smile, encouraging and yet modest, to drop the eyes shyly, to bow her head, to meditate on what she should say in order to preserve the proprieties of what is allowable and what is not; to devote constant attention to every step, to every “Oh!” “Ah!” “Indeed!” “Certainly,” “Perhaps,” “Oh yes!” “By no means!” and all the expressions for which she would be held to account before the entire company and by which she proved her good breeding, knowledge, modesty and dignity in gracing her home in the future. How many times she had repeated, as she walked lightly by her partner’s side through the dancing-hall which was warm to suffocation, “What an