Deb knelt in front of Cora, perplexed, musing; a vestal before the altar. What if she had envisioned the altar of romance as a mountain-peak in the sunset? Here it was a mat before an oil-stove. An altar, nevertheless, where she made painful sacrifice of illusion. For love was complete in itself, without past or future. She might not put eager question, before admitting love: is he young? is he free? does he care? does it hold chance of the final happiness? But she must accept it, barren and bitter and an unshared burden, a journey without ultimate lure of rest. Love was the big thing—the conviction remained. Only she had thought it conditional. And it was absolute.
... Slowly she lit a match, and applied it to the wick. From the mirrors and walls of the many-cornered room, a dozen Debs rendered variation of her dense black hair, her thick storm-grey eyes, and lustreless ivory skin. For Deb’s looks were of that mutable type which inspired every fourth-rate art faddist to paint her Holding a Melon; or in a Blue Jacket; or with head flung back against their favourite bit of Chinese drapery; or absorbed in the contents of a dust-bin (symbolic realism); or as a figure on an Egyptian frieze; or as Mary Magdalene; or as a Wood-nymph pursued by Silenus; or as a coster girl dancing to a barrel organ by naphtha-lights; or merely as “Deborah, an Impression”—till the sight of Deb herself was a repose from these fantastic and distorted relics of pre-war art-phases.
Deb as Reverie of a Girl, was so absorbed that she let the match burn down to her fingers before she was recalled to actualities. Quickly she let it drop; and at the same moment Jenny rushed in:
“The Chorus is off for to-night, Deb; isn’t it a shame? Mad’m llorraine is giving a squawking party in her room, and you and I have been specially invited.”
This was catastrophe.
“Oh Jenny—must we? Hasn’t she invited the soldier?”
“Out of compliment to us two, yes. But she can’t stick him, really, because he doesn’t jump about opening doors like a foreign monkey-on-a-stick.”
“I wish he would open some doors—to-night. I know exactly what will happen, Jenny: La llorraine will say: ‘Come, now we will be truly cosy!’—and immediately block all forms of ventilation. And then she’ll sing as if she were let loose again in the Paris opera-house, and I shan’t know if it’s my head bursting, or the walls and ceiling, or her voice. Old Gryce will object, and so will grandpapa, but they won’t take any steps, because each one will be afraid of putting a stop to something that is annoying the other more than himself——”
“Darling idiot, why did you ever say you wished you could hear her sing?”