2
Tucking them into her belt she went slowly downstairs, confused by a picture coming between her and her surroundings like a filmy lantern slide, of Portland Bill lying on a smooth sea in a clear afterglow....
“Quite a madonna,” said Mrs. Staple-Craven querulously. She sat low in her chair, her round gold head on its short stalk standing firmly up from billowy frills of green silk ... “a fat water-lily,” mused Miriam, and went wandering through the great steamy glass-houses at Kew, while the names that had been murmured during the introductions echoed irrelevantly in her brain.
“She must wear her host’s colours sometimes,” said Mr. Corrie quickly and gently.
Miriam glanced her surprise and smiled shyly in response to his shy smile. It was as if the faint radiance that she felt all round her had been outlined by a flashing blade. Mrs. Craven might go on resenting it; she could not touch it again. It steadied and concentrated; flowing from some inexhaustible inner centre, it did not get beyond the circle outlined by the flashing blade, but flowed back on her and out again and back until it seemed as if it must lift her to her feet. Her eyes caught the clear brow and smooth innocently sleeked dark hair of a man at the other end of the table—under the fine level brows was a loudly talking, busily eating face—all the noise of the world, and the brooding grieving unconscious brow above it. Everyone was talking. She glanced. The women showed no foreheads; but their faces were not noisy; they were like the brows of the men, except Mrs. Craven’s. Her silent face was mouthing and complaining aloud all the time.