The little feast was over and Mrs. Kronen was puffing at a cigarette when the hats were announced. As the fine incense reached her Miriam regretted that she had not confessed to being a smoker. The suggestion of tobacco brought the charm of the afternoon to its height. When the magic of the scented cloud drew her eyes to Mrs. Kronen’s face it was almost intolerable in its keenness. She gazed wondering whether Mrs. Kronen felt so nearly wild with happiness as she did herself. … Life what are you—what is life? she almost said aloud. The face was uplifted as it had been in the photograph, but with all the colour, the firm bows of gold hair, the colour in the face and strong white pillar of neck, the eyes closed instead of staring upwards and the rather full mouth flattened and drooping with its weight into a sort of tragic shapeliness—like some martyr … that picture by Rossetti, Beata Beatrix, thought Miriam … perfect reality. She liked Mrs. Kronen for smoking like that. She was not doing it for show. She would have smoked in the same way if she had been alone. She probably wished she was, as Mrs. Corrie did not smoke. How she must have hated missing her smokes at Newlands, unless she had smoked in her room.
“It’s—a—mis‑take,” said Mrs. Kronen incredulously, in response to the man’s announcement of the arrival of the hats. She waved her cigarette “imperiously,” thought Miriam, “how she enjoys showing off” … to and fro in time with her words. Mrs. Corrie rose laughing and explaining and apologising. Waving her cigarette about once more Mrs. Kronen ordered the hats to be brought in and her maid to be summoned, but retained her expression of vexed incredulity. She’s simply longing for us to be off now, thought Miriam, and changed her opinion a few moments later when Mrs. Kronen, assuming on the settee the reclining position in which they had found her when they came in, disposed one by one of the hats as Mrs. Corrie and the maid freed them from their boxes and wrappings, with a little flourish of the cigarette and a few slow words. … “Im‑poss‑i‑ble; not‑in‑key‑with‑your‑lines; slightly too ingénue,” etc.: to three or four she gave a grudging approval, whereupon Mrs. Corrie who was laughing and pouncing from box to box would stand upright and pace holding the favoured hat rakishly on her head. The selection was soon made and Miriam, whose weariness had returned with the millinery, was sent off to instruct the messenger that three hats had been selected and a bill might be sent to Brook Street in the morning.
As she was treating with the messenger in the little mauve and white hall, Mrs. Corrie came out and tapped her on the shoulder. Turning, Miriam found her smiling and mysterious. “We’re going by the 5:30,” she whispered. “Would you like to go for a walk for half an hour and come back here?”
“Rather!” said Miriam heartily, with a break in her voice and feeling utterly crushed. The beautiful clear room. She loved it and belonged to it. She was turned out. “All right,” smiled Mrs. Corrie encouragingly and disappeared. Under the eyes of the messenger and the servants who were coming out of the boudoir laden with hat boxes, she got herself out through the door.
VI
The West End street … grey buildings rising on either side, feeling away into the approaching distance—angles sharp against the sky … softened angles of buildings against other buildings … high moulded angles soft as crumb, with deep undershadows … creepers fraying from balconies … strips of window blossoms across the buildings, scarlet, yellow, high up; a confusion of lavender and white pouching out along a dipping sill … a wash of green creeper up a white painted house front … patches of shadow and bright light. … Sounds of visible near things streaked and scored with broken light as they moved, led off into untraced distant sounds … chiming together.
Wide golden streaming Regent Street was quite near. Some near narrow street would lead into it.
Flags of pavement flowing along—smooth clean grey squares and oblongs, faintly polished, shaping and drawing away—sliding into each other. … I am part of the dense smooth clean paving stone … sunlit; gleaming under dark winter rain; shining under warm sunlit rain, sending up a fresh stony smell … always there … dark and light … dawn, stealing. …
Life streamed up from the close dense stone. With every footstep she felt she could fly.
The little dignified high-built cut-through street, with its sudden walled-in church, swept round and opened into brightness and a clamour of central sounds ringing harshly up into the sky.
The pavement of heaven.
To walk along the radiant pavement of sunlit Regent Street forever.
She sped along looking at nothing. Shops passed by, bright endless caverns screened with glass … the bright teeth of a grand piano running
