Miriam swung her legs from the table and brought her tilted chair to the
ground. The leads sloped down as she got to her feet and the strip of
sky disappeared. The sunlight made a broad strip of gold along the
parapet and a dazzling plaque upon the slope of the leads. She lounged
into the shadowy middle of the room and stood feeling tall and steady
and easy and agile in the freedom of knickers. The clothes lying on the
bed were transformed. "I say" she murmured. Her cigarette end wobbling
encouragingly from the corner of her lips as she spoke, "they're not
bad." She strolled about the room glancing at them from different points
of view. They really made quite a good whole. It was the lilac that made
them a good whole, the fresh heavy blunt cones of pure colour. In the
distance the bunched ribbon looked almost all green. She drew the hat
nearer to the light and the ribbon became mauve with green shadows and
green with mauve shadows as it moved. The girl had been right about
bunching the ribbon a little way up the sugar-loaf and over the wide
brim. It broke the papery stiffness of the lilac and the harshness of
the black straw. The straw looked very harsh and black in the clearer
light. Out of doors it would look almost as if it had been done with
that awful shiny hat polish. If the straw had been dull and silky and
some shaded tone of mauve and green it would have been one of those hats
that give you a sort of madness, taking your eyes in and in, with the
effect of a misty distant woodland brought near and moving, depths of
interwoven colour under your eyes. But it would not have gone with the
black and white check. The black part of the hat was right for the tiny
check. That is the idea of some smart woman.... I did not think of it in
the shop, but I got it right somehow, I can see now. It's right. Those
might be someone else's things.... The sight of the black suède gloves
and the lace-edged handkerchief and the powder box laid out on the chest
of drawers made her eager to begin. This was dressing. The way to feel
you were dressing was to put everything out first and come back as
another person and make a grand toilet. It makes you feel free and
leisurely. There had been the long strange morning. In half an hour the
adventure would begin and go on and be over. The room would not be in
it. Something nice or horrible would come back. But the room would not
be changed.
2