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strength faster if I haven’t people on my mind. But you, Nellie . . . that’s different.” She put my two hands to her cheeks, making a frame for her face. “That’s different. Somebody young, and clear-eyed, chock-full of opinions, and without a past. But you may have a past, already? The darkest ones come early.”
I was delighted. She was . . . she was herself, Myra Henshawe! I hadn’t expected anything so good. The electric bulbs in the room were shrouded and muffled with coloured scarfs, and in that light she looked much less changed than Oswald. The corners of her mouth had relaxed a little, but they could still curl very scornfully upon occasion; her nose was the same sniffy little nose, with its restless, arched nostrils, and her double chin, though softer, was no fuller. A strong cable of grey-black hair was wound on the top of her head, which, as she once remarked, “was no head for a woman at all, but would have graced one of the wickedest of the Roman emperors.”
