It takes a consciousness of resistance overcome to make anything feel
quite real, and Rose, during the first three months after their return
to town in the autumn, encountered no resistance whatever. It was all,
as Frederica had said, oiled. She was asked to make no effort. The whole
thing just happened, exactly as it had happened to Cinderella. All she
had to do was to watch with wonder-wide eyes, and feel that she was,
deliciously, being floated along.
The conclusion Frederica and Violet had come to about her chance for
social success was amply justified by the event, and it is probable that
Violet had put her finger on the mainspring of it. One needn't assume
that there were not other young women at the prince's ball as beautiful
as Cinderella, and other gowns, perhaps, as marvelous as the one
provided by the fairy godmother. The godmother's greatest gift, I should
say, though the fable lays little stress on it, was a capacity for
unalloyed delight. No other young girl, beautiful as she may have been,
if she were accustomed to driving to balls in coaches and having princes
ask her to dance with them, could possibly have looked at that prince
the way Cinderella must have looked at him.
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