outlined with silky pale gold hair bulging softly over each ear, the broken curve continued by the gentle bulge of her cheeks as she pursed her face to meet the sunlight. She peered unsmiling, but every curve smiled; a little sunny face, sunlit. Fearing that she would move, Miriam tried to centre attention by seeming engrossed in Gerald’s operations, glancing sideways meanwhile in an entrancement of effort to define her small perfection. The list of single items summoned images of children who missed her charm by some accentuation of character, pointing backwards to the emphatic qualities of a relative and forward so clearly that already they seemed adult. Elspeth predicted nothing. The closest observation revealed no point of arrest. Her undivided impression once caught, could be recovered in each separate feature.
Eve came in as the music ceased. In the lull that followed the general greetings Miriam imagined a repetition of the song, to carry Eve back into what had gone before and forward with them in the unchanged morning. But Mrs. Thimm broke in with a tray and scattered them all towards the fire. Let’s hear Molly Darling once more she thought in a casual tone. After yesterday Eve would take that as a lack of interest in her presence. Supposing she did? She was so changed that she could be treated without consideration, as an equal … but she overdid it, preening herself, caring more for the idea of independence than for the fact. That would not keep her going. She would not be strong enough to sustain her independence. …
The sense of triumph threw up an effulgence even while Miriam accused herself of cruelty in contemplating the droopy exhaustion which had outlived Eve’s day of rest. But she was not alone in this; nice good people were secretly impatient with relatives who were always threatening to break down and become problems. And Eve had almost ceased to be a relative. Descending to the rank of competitor she was no longer a superior … she was an inferior masquerading as an equal … that was what men meant in the newspapers. Then it couldn’t be true. There