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Rh witty? Yes, I will allow he is good-looking, and he can dance. Ah, of course he is serious. I remember we talked about the dances of ancient Greece, and I could not understand one word he said. So it must have been serious; I always understand nonsense. Maud, I never saw anyone so reticent as you. What a lucky thing it is for us, that we have got me to do the talking."

Lucia sat down in the chair in front of her looking-glass and blew out the candles. The blinds were down over the window and the room was almost absolutely dark, so that Maud had to feel for the silver-handled brush which she had given her friend, for no glimmer of light shone on the dressing-table; and having found it, she had to feel with her hand to find the golden billows of Lucia's head. Thick and soft and warm they lay there in untroubled calm at present; soon she would raise in them that mysterious tempest of fiery life that lay in them. Then in the darkness she began to brush, and immediately almost the hidden vitality began to manifest itself. Strange little cracklings like the breaking of dry twigs was heard, and the great golden mass that lay at first so still and composed under her hands began to rise as the yeast of life worked in it. Each hair grew endued with it, and stiffened itself apart from the others, as if asserting its own individuality, and deep down in it sparks began to light themselves, like remote and momentary stars, that appeared and disappeared. Then that strange conflagration grew more general, from points of light there were flashes of pale flame, so that looking in the glass in front Maud could see lit by that mysterious illumination her friend's face, white and colourless and framed in lambent flashes. It looked like a face scarcely human; it was an abstraction of life, but half-incarnate, appearing and disappearing and glimmering in the reflecting surface with its silver frame.

"Oh, Lucia, it almost frightens me," she said. "How is it that you hold all this fire? Is it the fire in you that I love so, do you think? Where does it come from? How do you make it? Or does it make you?"

"I think you must be practising the love-duet with your young man," remarked Lucia.

"Oh, bother my young man," said Maud.

"Why should you? I shall get one, too, some day, I suppose. I hope they'll get on nicely together. Otherwise we must divorce them. Now if you've quite finished making a matchbox of me, let me find the other one and light the candles. I am so sleepy; having my hair brushed always makes me sleepy. Thanks ever so much, darling."