People
were in the room behind her, voices were speaking, things were happening
there, but they had nothing to do with her. That which had to do with her
was coming down the road. She could not see yet what it was, but she
could hear the faint sound of its approach.
The comedian spoke to someone else. She went into the cloak-room and took
off her motor cloak. As she glanced into a mirror to see if all the
details of her gown were perfect, she was struck by the expression on her
face, as if she had seen it on the face of a stranger. For a moment she
looked at herself as at a stranger, seeing her beauty with a curious
detachment, and admiring it without personal vanity or egoism, or any
small, triumphant feeling. Yet it was not her beauty which fascinated her
eyes, but an imaginative look in them and in the whole face. For the
first time she fully realised why she had a curious, an evocative,
influence on certain people, why she called the hidden children of the
secret places of their souls, why those children heard, and stretched out
their hands, and lifted their eyes and opened their lips.
There was a summoning, and yet a distant expression in her eyes. She saw
it herself. They were like eyes that had looked on magic, that would look
on magic again.
A maid came to help her. In a moment she had picked up her bouquet of
roses and her music-case, and was back in the green drawing-room.
There were more people in it now.
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