Someone was looking at her. She felt a truly desperate impatience at this second interruption. Someone was trying to force her to turn her head—yes, to the right. She was looking straight in front of her, down to where the hard, thick back of the little conductor seemed to centralise into itself, and again to distribute all the separate streams of the music. Lucy was staring at that back as though her maintaining her connection with it was her only link with the music. How tiresome that she should not be allowed to concentrate on her happiness! She violently dismissed the shadowy Simon; but he was there, just behind her left shoulder. Then, with another effort of will, she forced away from her that attraction on the right. She would not look! In all probability, it was imagination. She had known in Hawkesworth, in church, at the Penny Readings, that sensation that people were staring at her; simply her self-consciousness. She drove it off; it came closer to her. It was as though a voice were saying in her ear: "You shall look to the right.... You shall look to the right...."
"I won't!... I won't!" she replied, setting her teeth. Then, to her own pain and distress, she began to blush. She had always detested her inevitable blushing, despised herself for her weakness; she could not fight it; it was stronger than she. Surely all the hall was looking at her. She felt as though soon she would be forced to run away and hide in the comforting darkness of the street.
The music ceased; the little man was bowing; the tension was lifted; everywhere a buzz of talk rose, as though everyone for the last ten minutes had been hidden beneath a glass cover that was suddenly raised. Late comers, with anxious glances, peered about for their seats. Lucy turned around.
She saw at once that indeed it was true that someone had been staring at her. Someone was staring at her now. She stared in return. She knew that she should not. Her mother had always taught her that to stare at a stranger was almost the worst thing that you could do. Nevertheless, Lucy glanced. She could not help herself. He was looking at her as though he knew her. When she looked in her turn the start that he gave, the way that a half-smile hovered about his lips, was almost an acknowledgment of recognition. And had she not known him before? He seemed so familiar to her—and yet, of course, he could not be. The conviction that she had been staring suddenly overwhelmed her with shame, and she turned away. But now he was impressed upon her brain as though she were looking at a picture of him—his large, rather ugly, but extremely good-humoured face, his fair, rather untidy hair, his fair eyebrows, his short, closely-clipped moustache, his black dinner-jacket, and black bow tie—above all, that charming, doubtful, half-questioning smile.
But why, if they had never met before, did he stare like that? Why did ...?
The applause had broken out again. A tall man holding a violin was bowing. The Brahms violin concerto began.
She sat there in a puzzled and bewildered state. What had happened to her? Who had come to her, lifting her, it seemed, out of her own body, transforming her into some other creature? Was she feeling this merely because a man had stared at her? She felt, as she sat there, the blush still tingling in her cheeks, as though some precious part of her that had left her many years ago had now suddenly returned to her.
She was Lucy Moon, the whole, complete Lucy Moon, for the first time....
The first movement of the symphony ended. She looked at once to her right. His eyes were resting on her. She smiled.