“Why do you say that? How cruel to say that!” she murmured, and then suddenly she bowed her head upon her hands. “It’s been my terror. I’m ashamed of myself for thinking it. And now—you see it!”
I put my arm around her shoulders.
“I’m not cruel. I only want us to see things together. I don’t really think they’d ever come to that; and, at all events, he would never know that they had.”
“But I should,” Mollie said. “Yes, you would. And it’s horribly true that real things can be spoiled and blighted by false things. I’ve often seen it happen. You do see the danger, and you must take up the burden, my dear, of being cleverer than your husband, and save him along with yourself. If Vera were what she looks and seems to him, he might be right in feeling that he found in her something he couldn’t find in you. You must show him that she isn’t what she looks and seems and you must show him that you can be a first-rate paradise, too.”
“In a little flat in Bayswater! On a chicken-farm! No, it can’t be done. Paradises of this sort don’t grow in such places,” poor Mollie moaned.
“You can keep up the real paradise in them—the one he has already—when you get there. The point is that you must show him now that you can look like this one here. And the way to look it is to dress it. I’m sure you’ve realized the absolutely supreme importance of dress for women of the paradise type—the women you see here, all these sweet ministering angels to the Tommies and the young husbands. I don’t mean to say that, with the exception of Vera, they’re not as nice as you are in spite of being well dressed; but I do mean that if they dressed as you do they’d not be women of the paradise.”
Mollie’s hands had fallen, and she was gazing again with eyes childlike, astonished, and trusting.
“But, Judith, what do you mean?” she asked. “Dress? Of course you all dress beautifully. Haven’t I loved simply looking at you all, as if you’d been the most exquisite birds? But how could I do it? I haven’t the money; I never have had. If one has no money, one must be either æsthetic or dowdy, and I’ve always prefered to be dowdy.” “Yes, I saw that; I liked you for that. There’s hope for the dowdy, but none for the æsthetic; the one is humble, and the other is complacent. Your clothes express renunciation simply—and the summer sales. But though it is a question of money, some women who have masses of money never learn how to dress. They remain mere dressmakers' formulas; and others, with very little, can’t be passed by. They count anywhere. You’ve noticed my clothes. I’ve hardly any money, yet I’m perfect. All my clothes mean just what I intend them to; just as Vera’s mean what she intends, and Mrs. Travers-Cray’s and Lady Dighton’s, and Milly’s, for Milly already is as clever as possible at knowing her thing. But you’ve abandoned the attempt to intend. You’ve sunk down, and you let the winds rake over you. You’ve always made me think of a larkspur, that blue and silver kind, all pensive grace and delicacy; but you’re a larkspur that hasn’t been staked. Your sprays don’t count; they tumble anyhow, and no one sees your shape or colour. Last night, for instance—that turquoise-blue chiffon: not turquoise, and not that sort of chiffon.”
“I know it. I hated it,” she said.
“Of course you did, and so does any one who looks at you in it.”