"The window shades had closed like eyelids and the shaggy flower beds made the house look abandoned. In the window where one light had burned, however, the shade rippled. A hand peeled it back, revewaling a hot yellow slice of face--Bonnie, Mary, Therese or even Lux--looking down the street. Parkie Denton hooted his horn, a short hopeful blast, but just as the girl put her palm to the glass, the light went out."
The author uses symbolism in describing the return of the girls to the house, the sort of final hurrah before their final, impending incarceration. The "window shades...closed like eyelids" are symbolic of a true shutting in and putting to sleep of their social lives. The "shaggy flower beds" represent neglect of their "flowery youth" which will now forever be set aside and wasted out of their mothers contempt. The hand moving the shade represents their last reach at civilization, and the yellow light and "slice of face" is all the hope that is left in both the girls and the boys who so longingly sought after them. The fact that the face could have been any of them adds to the interchangeableness of what they represent; although their personalities are different, they are all in search of womanhood and freedom that they will never achieve.
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