"All sitting about in the big house; going mad; on their father's money." "Yes," said Alma simply, gathering her face into gravity. "It's rather terrible, you know." A black shadow bearing slowly down upon the golden picture.... But they were so determined to see women's lives in that way ... yet there was Miss Lane, and Mildred Gaunt and Eunice Bradley ... three of their own small group; all gone mad. "Well," said Alma rising, her hands moving up to her bright hair, adjusting it, with delicate wreathing movements, "I'm so glad you've come, old fing." She hummed herself to the door with a little tune to which Miriam listened standing in the middle of the room in a numb suspension. The door was opened. Alma would be gliding gracefully out. Her song ceased, and she cleared her throat with that little sound that was the sound of her voice in quiet comment. "Wow. Old brown-study." She turned to look. Alma's pretty head was thrust back into the room. To shake things off, to make one shake things off.... She smiled, groaning in spirit at her accentuated fatigue. One more little amused gurgle, and Alma was gone. She went into her own room. Next door. Opposite to it was Hypo's room. Opposite to her own door, the door of the bathroom, and just beyond, the swing door leading to the landing and the rooms grouped about it. Outside the low curtained windows was the midst of the garden. She was set down at the heart of the house. Sounds circled about her instead of coming faintly up.... She drew back the endmost curtain an inch or two. Bright light fell on her reflection in the long mirror. She was transformed already. It would be impossible to convince anyone that she was a tired Londoner. Here was already the self that no one in London knew. The removal of pressure had relaxed the nerves of her face, restoring its contours. Her mushroom hat had crushed the mass of her hair into a good shape. The sharp light called out its bright golds, deepened the colour of her eyes and the clear tints of her skin. The little old washed out muslin blouse flatly defining her shoulders and arms, pouched softly above the pale grey skirt.... I _do_ understand colour ... that tinge of lavender in such a pale, pale grey; just warming it ... and belonging perfectly to Grannie's spidery old Honiton collar.... The whole little toilet was quite good; could be forgotten, and would keep fresh, bleached by the dry bright air to paler grey and whiter white, while the notes of bright living colour in her face and hair intensified from day to day. She hunted out her handglass and consulted her unknown eyes. It was true. They were brown; not grey. In the bright light there was a web, thorny golden brown, round the iris. She gazed into its tangled depths. So strange. So warm and bright; her unknown self. The self she was meant to be, living in that bright, goldy brown filbert tint, irradiating the grey into which it merged. It was a discovery.