CHAPTER FOUR
I
"It can’t be the same night!" said Angelica to herself. "It can’t be only an hour ago that I was in the kitchen at home!"
For here she was now, in a soft little nest of a room, furnished in mahogany and dull blue, with every sort of convenience and luxury, with a gleaming white bathroom of its own, with long mirrors, shaded lamps, easy chairs. It amazed her. She had locked the door and got undressed, but she couldn’t persuade herself to go to bed. Barefooted, in a sturdy cotton night-dress her mother had made, she wandered about, examining everything like a happy child.
Then, not for the first time, she sat down before the dressing-table and studied her own reflection in the triple mirror—the profile with the long, delicate nose, the narrow cheek, the soft fullness of the chin. Then she looked straight before her, at her dark and solemn face, her long black hair, parted in the middle, making her more than ever like a Madonna, sorrowful, spiritual.
She was vaguely aware of the rare and exotic quality of her charm, and she was dissatisfied with herself because her thoughts were so incongruous. She couldn’t help wondering how much the lace bedspread cost, and where it had been bought. She had seen furnishings like these in the shops, and she began to compute how much the whole thing must have cost.
"For Gawd’s sake!" she cried impatiently. "Why can’t I just enjoy it, and not be so——”
She had no word for her meaning. She got up, and from behind the curtains looked out upon the clear and chilly May night, down below, across the road, over a woodland of delicate young trees, scarcely stirring in a faint wind. That august loveliness disturbed her. She turned away, back to the shelter of the dainty room, puzzled and angry because she couldn’t enjoy it with simplicity; because there was something, in the night outside—or was it within herself?—that distressed and hurt her.
Undine waiting for a soul!