It was on the morning of the very next day that Lisa saw The Frock.
She was engaged upon the task which Magda had described to her, checking the stock list against the actual frocks and ranging these in the order in which they appeared in the stock list so that Magda could later go through them speedily and decide upon their sale prices. She had managed to find and to arrange in the correct order five or six of the semi-formal evening frocks which hung together in one mahogany open cabinet on their pink satin–covered hangers and was now hunting amongst the unsorted remainder for the model named Tara, described in the book as black and white silk taffeta, Creed.
As she carefully slid each hanger forward to inspect the Model Gown which hung behind it, finding now Laura, now Rosy, now Minuit, but never yet Tara, her gaze was suddenly—as she pushed Minuit farther forward to clear a space—filled with the vision of—it was a magical coincidence—Lisette.
Child of the imagination of a great couturière, having that precise mixture of the insouciant and the romantic, the sophisticated and the simple, that only the female mind can engender, Lisette was the quintessential evening frock for a young girl: a froth of red pin-spotted white organza with a low neck, a tight bodice, a few deep ruffles over the shoulders, artful red silk piping edging these ruffles and the three tiers of the gathered skirts whose deepest tier would have cleared the floor by some eight inches, to leave a good view of a slender leg, a delicate ankle. The effect was of tiny spots set off by narrow stripes, the gaiety of crimson set off by the candour of white; the silky fabric very faintly shimmered.
Lisa stood, gazing her fill. She was experiencing for the first time that particular species of love-at-first-sight which usually comes to a woman much earlier in her life, but which sooner or later comes to all: the sudden recognition that a particular frock is not merely pretty, would not merely suit one, but answers beyond these necessary attributes to one’s deepest notions of oneself. It was her frock: it had been made, however unwittingly, for her.
She stood for a long time, drinking it in. The encounter was faintly, vaguely, strangely similar to her first meeting with the tyger. She gazed on, marvelling, and then at last, slowly, wrenchingly, she pushed the hanger forward, and continued her search for Tara.