There were bookshelves of
workmanship patently feminine in their facile decoration and
structural instability, and on them an array of glittering poets,
Shelley, Rossetti, Keats, Browning, and odd volumes of Ruskin, South
Place Sermons, Socialistic publications in torn paper covers, and
above, science text-books and note-books in an oppressive
abundance. The autotypes that hung about the room were eloquent of
aesthetic ambitions and of a certain impermeability to implicit
meanings. There were the Mirror of Venus by Burne Jones, Rossetti's
Annunciation, Lippi's Annunciation, and the Love of Life and Love and
Death of Watts. And among other photographs was one of last year's
Debating Society Committee, Lewisham smiling a little weakly near the
centre, and Miss Heydinger out of focus in the right wing. And Miss
Heydinger sat with her back to all these things, in her black
horse-hair arm-chair, staring into the fire, her eyes hot, and her
chin on her hand.
"I might have guessed--before," she said. "Ever since that
_seance_. It has been different ..."
She smiled bitterly. "Some shop girl ..."
She mused. "They are all alike, I suppose. They come back--a little
damaged, as the woman says in 'Lady Windermere's Fan.' Perhaps he
will. I wonder .
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