1
Virginia came only once again. Four nights later, a little after ten o’clock. Ivor, his book laid aside, was pacing the room in the suddenly restless way which was growing on him, when he heard the soft rustle of the car on the drive. He stood very still. And then an apparition came into the room. The apparition came towards him. He smiled at it, but the apparition was grave of face. Its face looked bleak.
“Oh, Ivor, I’ve come to tell you we are going to the south of France to-morrow. I just thought I’d tell you.” It said that shyly.
She had come alone, driving the open car. Virginia hated closed cars, she loved air, bitter, chill air; it made her feel ill, for she was very delicate, but she loved bitter, chill air. And now her face looked blanched with it, her blue eyes bitten bright with it; and a strand or two of golden hair played loose about her forehead, for her head had been uncovered but for that transparent stuff now on the table. She smiled vaguely, there was no light in her.
“Oh, Ivor, I’ve come to tell you we are going to the south of France to-morrow. I just thought I’d tell you....”
It was a queer moment for him, an upside-down kind of moment. He was still smiling at the amazing fact of seeing her—amazing because he had so wanted to!—when those words, intruding at the same moment, quite upset the equilibrium of his pleased gesture. He felt vividly that he didn’t want her to go away, but not at all. She stood close by him, in front of the fire. The little white face.... And all he could say was plaintively, absurdly: “But I hate your going away, Virginia—suddenly, like this!”
“It’s the only way to go away,” she said softly to the fire.
She had slipped off her fur-coat on to a chair, and now stood revealed in her evening-dress: a dress too rich for the ordinary occasion, a Venetian kind of dress, a deplorably beautiful dress of the kind which, women said dispassionately, only Virginia could “carry off.” What Madeleine Vionnet had created as a beautiful joke, Virginia made into a magnificent illusion. Throat and arms and shoulders exceeding white, her bosom tight in deep red silk of taffeta—but lo! this deep colour ended shortly, its coloured richness was but to tease your senses and ensnare your eyes! For suddenly there billowed from it a filmy white skirt, filmy and intangible, white upon white subtly flecked with golden-dust: a wide and waving whiteness which swayed as she walked, which swayed as she stood, gently, as though it lived a delicious life of its own: and from the deep red bodice there fell baubles on to the wide white skirt for a short way, short golden baubles of golden rope in arabesques—the curious fancy of a crafty designer who surely never thought his dress would be worn so inconsequently, taken three miles on a chilly night to a lonely house by a tiny English river....
“Suddenly—like this!” he repeated darkly.
“Well?” she asked, opening her eyes very wide at him; and then she gave a sharp little laugh at his darkling brows—as though, good Heavens, he were offended!