Then I am the smallest thing I know. Caring only for the come and go of days, and the promise of more days. There is not a soul I would sacrifice myself for. Nor even Michael, in his helplessness. When I felt that the world must stop to prevent his going to the Russian war, it was myself I feared to lose. Otherwise I should want to stop the world for all who go to be killed on battlefields. I do; a little. But that may be fear.
2
“You were a lovely person in your blue gown.” A lovely person in your blue gown....
“You were a lovely person in your blue gown.”
For that moment, walking across the empty spaces of the large high room full of blazing lights—that was when it was I felt him looking, and felt myself not there but looking on, with his eyes—I was a lovely person in a blue gown....
“You were a lovely person in your blue gown. Again you surprise me with a new aspect. I’ve seen you look charming, in Miriam’s quiet way. Didn’t know you could be splendid. Don’t fly out. It’s all right. I’m staying friends. Honour bright. For the present.”
That was written in the study in some luminous interval, eyes on a person crossing a room in a blue gown. Written on his principle of the niceness of saying nice things and having them said.... He is right. It works.
“You were a lovely person....”
Yet there is something wrong in his way of wanting effects, illusions. Seeing through them even while he goes under to them. Outline and surface, the lines of flowing draperies, carriage, the shape of a skull, he sees as fine because he sees them emerging from a fire-mist and a planet. Pitiful, and passing in their turn towards other forms. Yet those he singles out are at once in a solemn compulsion. Comically consecrated. Set somewhere between heaven and earth.
But for a while it is a real state ... changing you.