He got up. “Here’s something rather good,” he said, and with a start and an effort she took his place at the microscope, while he stood beside her and almost leaning over her.
She found she was trembling at his nearness and full of a thrilling dread that he might touch her. She pulled herself together and put her eye to the eye-piece.
“You see the pointer?” he asked.
“I see the pointer,” she said.
“It’s like this,” he said, and dragged a stool beside her and sat down with his elbow four inches from hers and made a sketch. Then he got up and left her.
She had a feeling at his departure as of an immense cavity, of something enormously gone; she could not tell whether it was infinite regret or infinite relief....
But now Ann Veronica knew what was the matter with her.
Part 8
And as she sat on her bed that night, musing and half-undressed, she began to run one hand down her arm and scrutinize the soft flow of muscle under her skin. She thought of the marvellous beauty of skin, and all the delightfulness of living texture. Oh the back of her arm she found the faintest down of hair in the world. “Etherialized monkey,” she said. She held out her arm straight before her, and turned her hand this way and that.
“Why should one pretend?” she whispered. “Why should one pretend?