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She
was a tall woman, with a glorious head and eyes that reminded Stephen of
a forest pool in autumn. Who had first said of her, he wondered, that
she looked like an October morning?
As he approached the shop the glow shone out on him through the dull
gold curtains, and he traced the crooked pine bough sweeping across the
thin silk background like the bold free sketch of a Japanese print. When
he rang the bell a minute later, the door was opened by Corinna, who was
holding a basket of marigolds.
"We were just going," she said, "as soon as I had put these flowers in
water."
She drew back into the room, bending over the low brown bowl that she
was filling, while Stephen went over to the fire, and greeted the two
old men who were sitting in deep arm chairs on either side of the
hearth. It was like stepping into another world, he thought, as he
inhaled a full breath of the warmth and the fragrance of roses; it was
as if a door into a dream had suddenly opened, and he had passed out of
the night and the cold into a place where all was colour and fragrance
and pleasant magic.


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