It was not the things
one did that made one appear unrefined, he had concluded at last, but
the way that one did them; and Patty Vetch's way was not the prescribed
way of his world. Small as she was there was too much of her. She
contrived always to be where one was looking. She was too loud, too
vivid, too highly charged with vitality; she was too obviously
different. If a redbird had flown into the heated glare of the ballroom
Stephen's gaze would have followed it with the same startled and
fascinated attention.
As the girl approached him now on the snow-covered slope, he was
conscious again of that swift recoil from chill disapproval to reluctant
attraction. Though she was not beautiful, though she was not even pretty
according to the standards with which he was familiar, she possessed
what he felt to be a dangerous allurement. He had never imagined that
anything so small could be so much alive. The electric light under which
she passed revealed the few golden freckles over her childish nose, the
gray-green colour of her eyes beneath the black eyelashes, and the
sensitive red mouth which looked as soft and sweet as a carnation.
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