nabled one to execute a flank movement like Hilda's nor
that she should conceive the first of them to be that one must come out
of a cab. She dismissed that impression with indignation as ungenerously
cynical, but it always came back for redismissal. It did not interfere
in the least, however, with her deliberate invitations to Stephen to
come to 10, Middleton street on afternoons or evenings when Hilda was
there. She was like one standing denied in the Street of Abundance; she
had an avidity of the eye for even love's reflection.

That was a little later. At first there was the transformation to
lament, the loss, the break.

"You look," cried Miss Livingstone, the first time Hilda arrived in the
dress of the novice, a kind of understudy of the Sisters' black and
white, "you look like a person in a book, full of salient points, and
yet made so simple to the reader. If you go on wearing those things I
shall end by understanding you perfectly."

"If you don't understand me," Hilda said, dropping into the corner of a
sofa, "_Cela que je m'en doute_, it's because you look for too much
elaboration. I am a simple creature, done with rather a broad
brush--_voila tout!_"

Nevertheless, Miss Livingstone's was a happy impression. The neutrality
of her hospital dress left Hilda in a manner exposed: one saw in a
special way the significance of lines and curves; it was an
astonishingly vigourous human expression.

Alicia leaned forward, her elbow on the arm of her chair, her chin
tucked into her palm, and looked at it. The elbow bent itself in a light
blue muslin sleeve of extreme elegance, trimmed with lace. The colour
found a wistful echo in the eyes that regarded Miss Howe, who was
accustomed to the look and met it with impenetrable commonplace, being
made impatient by nothing in this world so much as by futility, however
charming.

"Just now," Alicia said, "the shadows under your eyes are brushed too
deep."

"I don't believe I sleep well in a dormitory."

"Horrible! All the little privacies of life--don't you miss them?"

"I never had them, my dear--I never had them. Life has never given me
the luxury of curtains--I don't miss them. An occasional blind--a closed
door--and those we got even at the Institution. The decencies are
strictly conserved, believe me."

"One imagines that kind of place is always clean."

"When I have time I think of Number Three, Lal Behari's Lane, and
believe myself in Paradise. The repose