Then suddenly he remembered that he hadn't asked her whose life she had saved. How silly and how selfish! It was so like her not to talk about herself, and then he saw on a patch of posters: "June Rivers awarded the Nobel prize," and though he was very late he stopped to buy an evening paper.
XI
COUNTERPOINT
[To the Marchese Giovanni Visconti Venosta]
Matthew half shut his eyes—as he always did when he particularly wanted to see.
"For the first time in my life," he said, "I regret my myopia. Confronted with this room, imagination pales before sight."
Virginia looked round—at the strawberry ice brocade, at the gilt, at the Bouchers—so painstaking and so painful—at the palms that seemed to conceal manicurists and barbers.
"Look," he continued, "at our hostess. I am sure her ears and her nose take off at night. Her hair is a libel on horsehair and dye."