“Lord Holme est tout a fait de mon avis!” cried the comedian.
“Evidemment,” she answered, wishing Fritz would go. Miss Schley had not come yet. She was certain to be effectively late, as she had been at Mrs. Wolfstein’s lunch-party. Lady Holme did not feel as if she cared whether she came early or late, whether she were there or not. She was still companioned by her curious sensation of the morning, a sensation of odd loneliness and detachment, combined with excitement—but an excitement which had nothing to do with the present. It seemed to her as if she were a person leaning out of a window and looking eagerly along a road. People were in the room behind her, voices were speaking, things were happening there, but they had nothing to do with her. That which had to do with her was coming down the road. She could not see yet what it was, but she could hear the faint sound of its approach.
The comedian spoke to someone else. She went into the cloak-room and took off her motor cloak. As she glanced into a mirror to see if all the details of her gown were perfect, she was struck by the expression on her face, as if she had seen it on the face of a stranger. For a moment she looked at herself as at a stranger, seeing her beauty with a curious detachment, and admiring it without personal vanity or egoism, or any small, triumphant feeling. Yet it was not her beauty which fascinated her eyes, but an imaginative look in them and in the whole face. For the first time she fully realised why she had a curious, an evocative, influence on certain people, why she called the hidden children of the secret places of their souls, why those children heard, and stretched out their hands, and lifted their eyes and opened their lips.
There was a summoning, and yet a distant expression in her eyes. She saw it herself. They were like eyes that had looked on magic, that would look on magic again.
A maid came to help her. In a moment she had picked up her bouquet of roses and her music-case, and was back in the green drawing-room.
There were more people in it now. Fritz was still hovering about looking remarkably out of place and strangely ill at ease. To-day his usual imperturbable self-confidence had certainly deserted him. He spoke to people but his eyes were on the door. Lady Holme knew that he was waiting for Miss Schley. She felt a sort of vague pity for his uneasiness. It was time for the concert to begin, but the Princesses had not yet arrived. A murmur of many voices came from the hidden room beyond the screen where the audience was assembled. Several of the performers began to look rather strung up. They smiled and talked with slightly more vivacity than was quite natural in them. One or two of the singers glanced over their songs, and pointed out certain effects they meant to make to the principal accompanist, an abnormally thin boy with thick dark hair and flushed cheeks. He expressed comprehension, emphasising it by finger-taps on the music and a continual, “I see! I see!” Two or three of the members of the committee looked at their watches, and the murmur of conversation in the hidden concert-room rose into a dull roar.
Lady Holme sat down on a sofa. Sometimes when she was going to sing she felt nervous. There are very few really accomplished artists who do not. But to-day she was not at all nervous. She knew she was going to do well—as well as when she sang to Lady Cardington, even better. She felt almost as if she were made of music, as if music were part of her, ran in her veins like blood, shone in her eyes like light, beat in her heart like the pulse of life. But she felt also as if she were still at a window, looking down a road, and listening to the sound of an approach.
“Did you see him?”
A lady near her was speaking to a friend.
“Yes. Doesn’t he look shocking? Such an alteration!”