‘That is kind of Maud—I have been horrid about Maud’—but even so, I was glad when she went away.
I was glad to leave that place. London was much better than that. We came home in September.
I went to see Grandmother at Campden Hill Square. She was away and there was a new maid who did not know me.
Mrs. Woodruffe was in the country, she said. She was expected back next month.
I knew she had been at Yearsly. I had hoped that she was back. The maid did not offer me tea, and I did not ask her for it. I felt disappointed to an absurd degree. I walked across Campden Hill to Kensington Church, and thought of my wedding there four years before. I took a bus from there down to Chelsea and walked past Mollie’s flat. The blinds were down and there were no flowers in the window-boxes. That was natural, of course, with Mollie far away. I turned back again towards the bridge. I went into the little tea shop where we used to have meals very often. Here too the waitress was new, everything was changed; different and strange. It seemed as though I had been away for years and years.
And then as I sat and waited for some tea, I caught sight of my own face in a looking-glass that was hanging on the wall; and I realized suddenly with a shock that my own face was changed. I looked so shabby, so provincial, somehow, and dull. I had not realized before that I looked like that now. I had hardly thought of my own appearance for so long.
I stared at myself in that looking-glass, and felt ready to cry.
How was it that I had not seen myself like this before?
I looked at myself every morning, of course, when I did my hair, but I had not really looked for months, even when I dressed to go out with Guy. Was I getting old? I was nearly thirty now, was that really old?
I had seen myself so often in the same looking-glass before, an oval looking-glass it was, in a dark lacquered frame. I had sat so often at this same table with Mollie, and George, and Guy, and Hugo. Would they all be changed when I saw them again? If I did see any of them—George I would never see.