Mansfield uses personification to demonstrate Leila’s excitement and convey her enthusiastic, romanticized perception of the ball. When Leila first enters the drill hall, her excitement is infused in the descriptions of the world around her, filtering the setting through her excited outlook. Leila imagines the music leaping and the light in the dressing room flickering as if it's dancing:
A great quivering jet of gas lighted the ladies’ room. It couldn’t wait; it was dancing already.
The light is described as "quivering" with excitement, dancing like attendees of the ball will soon dance. By imagining that the light is just as excited to dance as Leila is, Mansfield illustrates how Leila imposes her illusion of the ball onto the world around her, ignoring the bad signs about it. If viewed from a less romanticized perspective, the “quivering” could also be a sign of the more ramshackle nature of the ball (which, after all, takes place not in a ballroom but in a drill hall, which is normally where soldiers practice military drills). Yet, by personifying the light and describing it as “dancing,” Leila turns a potentially distressing aspect of the setting into something appealing and grand.
