19
The four of them were together in a room again, fastening and hooking and adjusting; standing about before mirrors. We’ve all grown up together ... we can admit it now ... we’re admitting it. Everything clear, back to the beginning; happy and good. The room was still with the hush of its fresh draperies, hemming them in. Beautiful immortal forms moved in the room, reaping ... voices, steady and secure, said nothing but the necessary things, borne down with wealth, all the wealth there was ... all the laughter and certainty. Immortality. Nothing could die. They saw and knew everything. Each tone was a confession and a song of truth. They need never meet and speak again. They had known. The voices of Sarah and Harriett would go on ... marked with fresh things.... Her own and Eve’s would remain, separate, to grow broken and false and unrecognisable in the awful struggle for money. No matter. The low secure untroubled tone of a woman’s voice. There was nothing like it on earth.... If you had once heard it ... in your own voice, and the voice of another woman responding ... everything was there.