She beamed in spacious self-congratulation and plunged into the midst of his theme in holiday mood. She was in a theatre, without walls, her known world and all her memories spread, fanwise about her, all intent on what she saw, changing, retreating to their original form, coming forward, changing again, obliterated, and in some deep difficult way challenged to renewal. The scenes she watched opened out one behind the other in clear perspective, the earlier ones remaining visible, drawn aside into bright light as further backgrounds opened. The momentary sound of her own voice in the room encouraging his narrative, made no break; she dropped her remarks at random into his parentheses, carefully screening the bright centres as they turned one by one into living memories. …
Suddenly she was back withering in the cold shabby room before the shock of his breaking off to suggest with a swift personal smile that she herself should go to Russia. For a moment she stared at him. He waited, smiling gently. It did not matter that he thought her worthy. … The conviction that she had already been to Russia, that his suggestion was foolish in its recommendation of a vast superfluous undertaking, hung like a veil between her and the experiences she now passed through in imagining herself there. The very things in the Russian student circles that had most appealed to her, would test and find her out. She would be one of those who would be mistrusted for not being sufficiently careless about her dress and hair. It would not suit her to catch up her hair with one hairpin. She would not be strong enough to study all day and half the night on bread and tea. She was sure she could not associate perpetually with men students, even living and sharing rooms with them, without the smallest flirtation. If she were wealthy like he, she would not so calmly accept having all things in common; poor she would be uneasy in dependence on other students. She sat judged. There was a quality behind all the scenes, something in the Russians that she did not possess. It was the thing that made him what he was. … It answered to a call that was being made all the time to everyone, everywhere. Yet why did so many of them drink ?