Dr. McHibbert’s voice interrupted her, damming up the urgent flow of communications. She watched him, listening without attention.
“He’s like a marvellously intelligent bolster” she said tonelessly “but with a heart and a soul. He certainly has a soul.”
Flattered by a soft chuckle of amusement, she added in a low murmuring man’s voice “the objectors are like candle-lit turnip ghosts,” and was rewarded by the first direct glance from the blue eyes, smiling, assuring her that she was acceptable. The ghost of the remembered face was laid. Whoever it was, if in reality it were to reappear in her life, she would be able to overcome her aversion by bold flirtation.
When the lecturer at last rose to reply, the guiding phrases of his discourse were the worn familiar keys of a past experience. Used for the second time at the doors of the chambers they had opened within the background of life, they grated, hesitating, and the heavy sound threw the bright spaces into shadow and spread a film of doubt over Miriam’s eagerness to escape and share her illumination with people waiting outside in the surrounding gloom. The light would return and remain for her. But it was something accomplished unaccountably. The mere reproduction of the magic phrases, even when after solitary peaceful contemplation she should have reassembled them in their right relations and their marvellously advancing sequence, would not carry her hearers along the road she had travelled. The something that held them together, lively and enlivening, was incommunicable.
“Don’t huggy away. The audience will take a considerable time to disperse.”
Miriam desired only to escape into the night. Just outside, in the darkness, was the balm that would disperse her disquietude. The grey-clad woman held it suspended in the hot room, piling mountainously up. But they sat enclosed, a closely locked party of two. Conversation was going on all over the room. This woman with her little deprecating frown at the idea of immediate departure, had the secret of the congregational aspect of audiences. Miriam sat still, passively surrendering to the forcible initiation into the new role of lingerer, to the extent of floundering through absent-minded responses.
“What?” she said suddenly, turning full round. Something had thrilled upon the air about her, bringing the whole evening to a head.
“Haldane’s Pathway to Reality” repeated the woman as their eyes met. Miriam was held by the intense radiance of the blue eyes. Light, strangely cool and pure, flowed from the still face. She was beautiful, with a curious impersonal glowless beauty. The light that came from her was the light of something she saw, habitually.
“But I ought not to recommend you to read. You ought to spend all your free time in the open air. Moreover, it’s very stiff reading.”
Miriam rose, beleaguered and flinching. How did people find out about books? Where did they get them from? This woman could not afford to buy big expensive volumes...... Why did her quick mind assume that the difficulty of the book would be a barrier, and not see that it was the one book she was waiting for, even if it were the stiffest and dryest in the world?...... But the title was unforgettable; one day she would come across the book somewhere and get at its meaning in her own way.