She was saying something about Paris. Miriam attended swiftly, not having grasped the beginning, only the fact that she was talking and the curious dry level of her voice. Beginning on something as everyone did, ignoring the present, leaving herself sitting there outside life.... She made a vague response, hoping to hear about Paris. Only to be startled by the tone and colour of her own voice. Miss Prout would imagine that her life had been full. In any case could not imagine....
“How long are you staying?” The question shot across at her. She did not know as she answered whether she had seen the swift hot glance of the blue eyes, or heard it in the voice. But she had found the woman who wrote the searing scenes, the strange abrupt phrases that lashed out from the page.
“Tomorrow I shall be grilling in my flat,” went on Miss Prout. Alma’s laughter tinkled from above. She was coming this way. Miss Prout’s voice hurried on incisive, splitting the air, ending with a rush of low words as Alma appeared round the corner. Miriam watched their little scene, smooth, unbroken by a single pause or hesitation, saw them go away together, still talking.
“My hat,” she murmured to the thrilled surroundings, and again “My hat.” She clutched at the fading reverberations, marvelling at her own imperviousness, at the way the drama had turned, even while it touched her, to a painted scene, leaving her unmoved. Miss Prout’s little London eyrie. A distasteful refuge between visits.... Had it been a flattering appeal, or an insult?
She is like the characters in her book, direct, swift, ruthless, using any means.... She saw me as a fool, offered me the rôle of one of the negligible minor characters, there to be used by the successful ones. She is one with her work, with her picture of life.... But it is not a true picture. The glinting sea, all the influences pouring in from the garden denied its existence. It was just a fuss, the biggest drama in the world was a fuss in which people competed, gambling, everyone losing in the end. Dead, empty loss, on the whole, because there was always the commission to be paid. Life in the world is a vice; to which those who take it up gradually became accustomed.... Her eyes clung to the splinters of gold on the rippling blue sea. Dropped them, and she was confined in the hot little rooms of a London flat. If Miss Prout was not enviable, so feared her lonely independence, then no one was enviable.
“Hullo, Miriametta! All alone?”
“They’ve gone to look at an enormous book; too big to lift.”
“Yes. And what’s Miriam doing?”
“Isn’t it a perfect morning?”
“It’s a good day. It’ll be a corker later on. Very pleasant here till about lunch time. You camping here for the morning?” She looked up.