When seven o'clock struck she got out of bed, and again looked in the glass. She felt rested in body, and no longer had the tangled sensation in her head. But the face which confronted her reminded her disagreeably of Millie Deans, the American singer. It had what Charmian called the "Pierrot look," a too expressive and unnatural whiteness which surely told secrets. It seemed to her, too, a hard face, too determined in expression, repellent almost. And surely nothing is likely to be more repellent to a man than a girl's face that is hard.
Since her conversation with Susan Fleet by the little lake in the Algerian garden, Charmian had felt that destiny had decreed her marriage with Claude Heath. So she put the matter to herself. Really that conversation had caused her secretly to decide that she would marry Claude Heath.
"It may be so," Susan Fleet had said. "Perhaps part of your destiny is to learn through that man, and to teach him."
The words had gone to join the curious conviction that had come to Charmian out of the white dust floating up from the road that runs through Mustapha, out of the lilies, out of the wrinkled trunk of the great palm that was separated by the yellow-green water from all its fellows, "I shall be here again with him."
Surely the strong assertion of the will is the first step that takes a human being out of the crowd. Charmian had suffered because she was in the crowd, undistinguished, lost like a violet in a prairie abloom with thousands of violets. Something in Algeria, something perhaps in Susan Fleet, had put into her a resolve, unacknowledged even to herself. She had returned to England, meaning to marry Claude Heath, meaning to use her will as the ardent and capable servant of her heart.
But what she said to herself was this, "I believe destiny means to bring us together." She wrapped a naked little fact up in a soft tissue of romance and wonder.
But the face in the glass which now looked at her was too determined, too hard. It startled her. And she changed the expression on it. But then it looked insincere, meretricious, affected, and always haggard.
For a minute Charmian hesitated, almost resolved to go back to bed. But, oh, the dulness of the long evening shut in there! Three hours ago, at Charing Cross Station, she had looked forward to it. But now!
Only once in her life had Charmian made up her face. She knew many girls who disfigured their youth by concealing it with artifice. She thought them rather absurd and rather horrid. Nevertheless she had rouge and powder. One day she had bought them, shut herself in, made up her face, and been thoroughly disgusted with the effect. Yes, but she had done it in a hurry, without care. She had known she was not going to be seen.
Softly she pulled out a drawer.