Her hands clench’d down, she pressed from sight;
And I was a full-leav’d, full-bough’d tree,
Tranquil and trembling and deep in the night.’
Sara laid her cloak on a table, and followed the servant into Frau Wilhelmi’s reception-room. The well-known scene smote upon her eyes with a weird strangeness and sense of unfamiliarity; it was the same, with the accustomed sounds of loud talking, merry laughter, and resounding music. Light and sounds blended together and beat upon her brain in a combined thunder. She could distinguish nothing clearly or distinctly, beyond the faces and the voices of those who actually came up to her and addressed her.
By a vast effort of will she kept her composed, impassive demeanour. When she set out she had a vague idea that on finding herself in the midst of a gay and animated company, she would be able to smile and speak and do as they did, even if mechanically. But the effort failed. Her lips felt stiffened, her tongue tied, so that smiling was impossible, and only the merest ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ would pass her lips.
‘Nun, Miss Ford!’ exclaimed Frau Wilhelmi, taking her hand. ‘You look ill, recht elend und leidend. Have you got a cold?’
‘No–a little headache. I thought it would do me good to come out,’ she murmured.
Had she followed her own impulse, she would have turned and left the house again instantly, but she had an underlying determination to go through with the ordeal, having once braved it, albeit it proved more scathing than she had expected.
Then Luise came up to her, laughing, with some absurd story, to which Sara listened, thankful that she was not expected to speak–interruptions being received unfavourably by the volatile Luise. Luise did not notice Miss Ford’s excessive pallor, or if she did was too absorbed in her own affairs to observe it particularly, or be shocked by it.