long while in happy social contact; yet so differently; deeply and serenely alive and without the blank anxious looking for the continuance of social excitement. This something would continue, it was in herself, independently. It was as if there were someone with her in the room, peopling her solitude and bringing close around her all her past solitudes, as if it were their secret. They greeted her; justified. Never again, so long as she could sit at work and lose herself to awake with the season forgotten and all the circumstances of her life coming back fresh leaping, as if narrated from the fascinating life of someone else, would they puzzle or reproach her.
She drew her first page of general suggestions written so long ago that they already seemed to belong to some younger self, and copied them in ink. The sound of the pen shattered the silence like sudden speech. She listened entranced. The little strange sound was the living voice of the brooding presence. She copied each phrase in a shape that set them like a poem in the middle of the page, with even spaces between a wide uniform margin; not quite in the middle; the lower margin was wider than the upper; the poem wanted another line. She turned to the manuscript listening intently to the voice of Mr. Lahitte pouring forth his sentences, and with a joyous rush penetrated the secret of its style. It was artificial . There was the last line of the poem summing up all the rest. Avoid, she wrote, searching; some word was coming; it was in her mind, muffled, almost clear; avoid—it flashed through and away, just missed. She recalled sentences that had filled her with hopeless fury, examining them curiously, without anger. Avoid ornate alias. So that was it! Just those few minutes glancing through the pages standing by the table while the patient talked about her jolly, noisy, healthy, thoroughly wicked little kid, and now remembering every point he had made … extraordinary. But this was life! These strange unconsciously noticed things, living on in one, coming together at the right moment, part of a reality .