‘Ugly and noisy,’ muttered Judith. ‘Ugly and noisy and crude and smelly....’ You could go on for ever.
There were eyes staring from everywhere, necks craning to look at her....
‘But I can abstract myself. I can ignore their rudeness....’
It was the moonlight filling the blue that made it so cold and pure. Above the icefields and the snow lay the cold translucent pastures of the air....
She studied the row of faces opposite her, and then more rows, and more, of faces. Nearly all plain, nearly all with a touch of beauty: here and there well-cut heads, broad white placid brows; young necks; white teeth set in pleasant smiles; innocent intelligent lovely eyes. Accepting, revealing faces they were, with no reserves in them, looking at each other, at things—not inward at themselves. But just a herd, when all was said: immature, untidy, all dull, and all alike, commonplace female creatures in the mass. But boring it was! If you could see Mariella’s clear thorough-bred face among them,—would that too get merged?
That was where she should be humbly sitting, among those quieter heads, right at the end. There was a light there, flashing about: the tail of her eye had already caught it several times. She looked more closely. It was somebody’s fair head, so fiercely alive that it seemed delicately to light the air around it: a vivacious emphatic head, turning and nodding; below it a white neck and shoulder, generously modelled, leaned across the table. Then the face came round suddenly, all curves, the wide mouth laughing, warm-coloured.... It made you think of warm fruit,—peaches and nectarines mellowed in the sun. It seemed to look at Judith with sudden eager attention and then to smile. The eyes were meeting her own, inquiring deeply.
‘Who’s that?’ said Judith excitedly, forgetful of her position.
‘Oh, one of the freshers. I don’t know her name.’
Her name, her very name would be sure to have the sun on it.
All at once Judith found courage to eat her pudding.