She was blushing tremendously, and in spite of an effort of courage her gaze dropped from his. At length his gaze shifted, on the pretext of dropping cigarette-ash very carefully into an ash-tray.
He had, then, been thinking about her all those months, differentiating her from the others, summing her up! And how well he had summed her up, and how well he had expressed himself--so romantically (somehow) and yet with such obvious truth! (Of course he had been having a dig at his own wife, who had divorced him! You could see how embittered he was on the subject of wives!) She wondered if he had thought her beautiful for long. Fancy him moving about the office and forming ideas about all of them, and never a sign, never the slightest sign that he could tell one of them from another! And he had chosen that night to reveal his mind to her. She was inexpressibly flattered. Because Mr. Grig was clearly a connoisseur--she had always felt that. If Mr. Grig considered her beautiful...!
And in fact she had an established assurance of beauty. She knew a good deal about herself. Proudly she reflected, amid her blushes, upon the image of her face and hair--the eyes that matched her hair, the perfectly formed ears, the softness of the chin and the firmness of the nose, the unchallengeable complexion, the dazzling teeth. She was simple enough to be somewhat apologetic about the largeness of her mouth, unaware that a man of experience flees from a small rosebud mouth as from the devil, and that a large mouth is the certain sign of goodwill and understanding in a woman. She was apologetic, too, about the scragginess of her neck, and with better reason. But the wrists and the ankles, the legs, the shoulders, the swelling of the hips, the truly astounding high, firm and abundant bosom! Beyond criticism! And she walked beautifully, throwing back her shoulders and so emphasizing the line of the waist at the back. She walked with her legs and hips, and the body swam forward above them. She had observed the effect thousands of times in street mirrors. The girls all admitted that she walked uniquely. Then, further, she had a smile (rarely used) which would intensify in the most extraordinary way the beauty of her face, lighting it, electrifying the eyes, radiating a charm that enraptured. She knew that also. A superlative physical pride rose up out of the subconscious into the conscious, and put her cheap pretty clothes to shame. It occurred to her that Mr. Grig had been talking very strangely, very unusually.
"I don't suppose I shall ever marry," she said plaintively. "How can I?" She meant, and without doubt he understood: "How can I possibly meet a man who is worth marrying?" She thought with destructive disdain of every youth who had ever reacted to her charm. The company at the dance she had missed seemed contemptible. They were still dancing. What a collection of tenth-rate fellows!
She became gloomy, pessimistic, as she saw the totality of her existence and its prospects. The home at Putney had been a prison. She had escaped from it, but only to enter another prison. She saw no outlet. She was trapped on every side. She could not break out of the infernal circle of poverty and of the conventions. Not in ten years could she save enough to keep her for a year. She had to watch every penny. If she was mad enough to go to a West End theatre she had to consider the difference between a half-crown and a three-shilling pit. Thousands of men and women negligently fling themselves into expensive taxis, but a rise in bus fares or Tube fares would seriously unbalance Lilian's budget. She passed most of her spare time in using a needle to set off her beauty, but what a farce was the interminable study and labour! She could not possibly aspire to even the best gloves; and as for the best stockings, or the second best!--the price of such a pair came to more than she could earn in a week. It was all absurd, tragic, pitiful. She had common-sense ample enough to see that her beauty was futile, her ambitions baseless, and her prospects nil. If she had been a vicious girl, she might have broken through the dreadful ring into splendours which she glimpsed and needed. But she was not vicious.
"Pooh!" exclaimed Mr. Grig impatiently. "You could marry anybody you liked if you put your mind to it."
And he spoke so scornfully of her lack of faith, so persuasively, so inspiringly, that she had an amazing and beautiful vision of herself worshipped, respected, alluring, seductive, arousing passion, reciprocating passion, kind, benevolent, eternally young, eternally lovely, eternally exercising for the balm and solace of mankind and a man the functions for which she was created and endowed--in a word, fulfilling herself. And for the moment, in the ecstasy of resolution to achieve the impossible, she was superb and magnificent and the finest thing that a man could ever hope to witness.
And she thought desperately:
"I'm twenty-three already. Time is rushing past me. To-morrow I shall be old."
After a silence Mr. Grig said: