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 she went upstairs to her room and tried on the hat she had worn in London, folding the side-flaps of the mirror round her so that she could see her profile. She leant forward gazing at a point in space represented by the prismatic stopper of a scent bottle. With a long, slow breath she went slowly through the action of drawing off a glove.

"Living," she said aloud, "for years and years on the defensive." She looked into the mirror at the neat quiet room behind her, with the reflected pinkness from curtains and carpet over its white wall, and the two mahogany bedsteads with their dappled eiderdowns. There were photographs of her aunts, her children and her brother-in-law's wife along the mantelpiece, a print of the Good Shepherd above the washstand, and "Love among the Ruins" over the beds. On a bracket were some pretty vases of French china Harold had given her at Dieppe, and a photogravure of the Luxemburg gardens she had given Harold. In a bookcase were several selections from the poets, beautifully bound in coloured suède,