Part 7
Then one day a little thing happened that clothed itself in
significance.
She had been working upon a ribbon of microtome sections of the
developing salamander, and he came to see what she had made of
them. She stood up and he sat down at the microscope, and for a
time he was busy scrutinizing one section after another. She
looked down at him and saw that the sunlight was gleaming from
his cheeks, and that all over his cheeks was a fine golden down
of delicate hairs. And at the sight something leaped within her.
Something changed for her.
She became aware of his presence as she had never been aware of
any human being in her life before. She became aware of the
modelling of his ear, of the muscles of his neck and the textures
of the hair that came off his brow, the soft minute curve of
eyelid that she could just see beyond his brow; she perceived all
these familiar objects as though they were acutely beautiful
things. They WERE, she realized, acutely beautiful things. Her
sense followed the shoulders under his coat, down to where his
flexible, sensitive-looking hand rested lightly upon the table.
She felt him as something solid and strong and trustworthy beyond
measure. The perception of him flooded her being.
He got up. "Here's something rather good," he said, and with a
start and an effort she took his place at the microscope, while
he stood beside her and almost leaning over her.
She found she was trembling at his nearness and full of a
thrilling dread that he might touch her. She pulled herself
together and put her eye to the eye-piece.
"You see the pointer?" he asked.
"I see the pointer," she said.
"It's like this," he said, and dragged a stool beside her and sat
down with his elbow four inches from hers and made a sketch.
Then he got up and left her.
She had a feeling at his departure as of an immense cavity, of
something enormously gone; she could not tell whether it was
infinite regret or infinite relief. . . .
But now Ann Veronica knew what was the matter with her.
