symmetry
veiling an internal want of balance. Ann Veronica decided she would have
to go on with Capes another day, and, looking up, discovered him sitting
on a stool with his hands in his pockets and his head a little on one
side, regarding her with a thoughtful expression. She met his eye for a
moment in curious surprise.

He turned his eyes and stared at Miss Garvice like one who wakes from
a reverie, and then got up and strolled down the laboratory toward his
refuge, the preparation-room.

Part 7

Then one day a little thing happened that clothed itself in
significance.

She had been working upon a ribbon of microtome sections of the
developing salamander, and he came to see what she had made of them. She
stood up and he sat down at the microscope, and for a time he was busy
scrutinizing one section after another. She looked down at him and saw
that the sunlight was gleaming from his cheeks, and that all over
his cheeks was a fine golden down of delicate hairs. And at the sight
something leaped within her.

Something changed for her.

She became aware of his presence as she had never been aware of any
human being in her life before. She became aware of the modelling of his
ear, of the muscles of his neck and the textures of the hair that came
off his brow, the soft minute curve of eyelid that she could just see
beyond his brow; she perceived all these familiar objects as though
they were acutely beautiful things. They WERE, she realized, acutely
beautiful things. Her sense followed the shoulders under his coat, down
to where his flexible, sensitive-looking hand rested lightly upon the
table. She felt him as something solid and strong and trustworthy beyond
measure. The perception of him flooded her being.

He got up. "Here's something rather good," he said, and with a start and
an effort she took his place at the microscope, while he stood beside
her and almost leaning over her.

She found she was trembling at his nearness and full of a thrilling
dread that he might touch her. She pulled herself together and put her
eye to the eye-piece.

"You see the pointer?" he asked.

"I see the pointer," she said.

"It's like this," he said, and dragged a stool beside her and sat down
with his elbow four inches from hers and made a sketch. Then he got up
and left her.

She had a feeling at his departure as of an immense cavity, of something
enormously gone; she could not tell whether it was infinite regret