Grace Horton appraised herself in the mirror, and was not pleased with
what she saw. "Face it, Grace," she said aloud. "You are positively
hopeless." She tilted her head to one side. "Well, nearly hopeless."
Her eyes were good, that was something. Wide, gray and thickly lashed,
they were her best feature. Her nose was just too snub to be pert. Her
mouth, though her lips were generous, and her teeth well-aligned, had
too much slack at the outer edges. She either held it in a perpetual
smile--"An easy way to be mistaken for an idiot," she remarked
bitterly--or it sagged. Her hair, an unfortunate mustard-and-brass
shade, would not hold a curl for more than two hours at the outside.
"All I need," she decided ruefully, "is a brand-new head."
Grace leaned away from the mirror to consult the alarm clock which
lay almost hidden behind an impressive array of cosmetics. Five till
eleven. "He's not coming," she said to her image. "Give it up girl. He
said he'd come, and he probably meant it when he said it, but he's not
coming." She turned from the mirror and began to undress, beside the
single three-quarter-sized bed. "And why should he come?" she asked
herself tiredly. "He doesn't love you. He never--to his credit, damn
it--said he did, either. Hive Law requires that all males shall marry
by the age of twenty-five, or be taken for Readjustment. Bachelors are
not good for racial survival, unquote. Unwed girls may list themselves
in the classified section of the phone book, along with their
qualifications, then start sweating it out by the phone. So I did, so
he called me, so we're engaged. But that doesn't mean we have to like
it. Or that _he_ has to, anyhow. And I'm not sure that _I_ do."
Grace toyed a moment with the idea of submitting herself for
Readjustment, then gave it up. "A new face wouldn't help," she decided.
"What I need is a new outlook. Besides, what have I got to crab about?
I'm engaged, I'm only twenty-four, and someday I'll be the wife of
Secondary Speakster of the Hive. So hurray for _me_," she added,
listlessly, as she flipped the coverlet back, and hopped into bed. She
lay there in the glaring Light-of-Day, waiting for Ultrablack. When it
came, in a soundless rush of darkness, she spoke just once more. "But
_why_ didn't he come!"