‘But I can’t live in ugliness....’
A clamorous bell roused her from a state of apathetic despair; and she opened her door and crept along in the wake of the click of heels and the laughter of many voices.
This was Hall—huge, bare, full of echoes and hard light, whiteness and cold blue curtains ... blue and high like twilight above ice and snow when the full moon is rising.
‘I can always think of that and not mind if nobody talks to me....’
Down one wall, a row of black frocks and white aprons at attention; at the top of the room, High Table beginning to fill up: black garments, grey, close-brushed intellectual heads, serious thin faces looking down the room, one young one, drooping a little: piles of chestnut hair and a white Peter Pan collar. Crowds of dresses of all colours, shapes and sizes, all running about briskly, knowing where to go; a sea of faces bobbing and turning, chattering, bright-eyed, nodding and laughing to other faces, sure of themselves.
‘Margaret, come and sit here ... here ... here! Next to me! Sylvia, next to me.... Is there a place for Sylvia?...’
‘I am lost, lost, abandoned, alone, lost,’ thought Judith wildly and pounced for the nearest chair and clung to it. She was between two girls who stared at her, then looked away again. She bowed her head: the old terror of faces engulfed her.
There fell a silence. A voice like a bell went through the room, calling: Benedictus, benedicat. And then came a roar,—a scraping, an immense yelling that rose to the ceiling and there rolled, broke, swelled again without pause. Beneath its volumes she felt herself lost again; but nobody else appeared to have noticed it.
‘Can I pass you the salt?’ said her neighbour.
‘After you,’ said Judith earnestly.