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Sandra Belloni — Volume 5 by George Meredith
page 80 of 96 (83%)
all; willing that the talker overhead should deceive others, and herself
likewise, if possible. Emilia found her hands acting daintily and
critically in the attirement of her person; and then surprised herself
murmuring: "I forgot that Tracy won't be here to-night." By which she
betrayed that she had divined those arts she was to shine in, according
to Tracy; and betrayed that she had a terrible fear of a loss of all
else. It pained her now that Tracy should not be coming. "Can I send
for him?" she thought, as she looked winningly into the glass, trying to
feel what sort of a feeling it was to be in love with a face like that
one fronting her, so familiar in its aspects, so strange when scrutinized
studiously! She drew a chair, and laying her elbow on the toilet-table,
gazed hard, until the thought: "What face did Wilfrid see last?"
(meaning, "when he saw me last") drove her away.

Not only did she know herself now a face of many faces; but the life
within her likewise as a soul of many souls. The one Emilia, so
unquestioning, so sure, lay dead; and a dozen new spirits, with but a dim
likeness to her, were fighting for possession of her frame, now occupying
it alone, now in couples; and each casting grim reflections on the other.
Which is only a way of telling you that the great result of mortal
suffering--consciousness--had fully set in; to ripen; perhaps to debase;
at any rate, to prove her.

To be of worth was still her fixed idea--all that was clear in the
thickening mist. "I cannot be ugly," she said, and reproved herself for
simulating a childish tone. "Why do I talk in that way? I know I am not
ugly. But if a fire scorched my face? There is nothing that seems
safe!" The love of friends was suggested to her as something to rely on;
and the loving them. "But if I have nothing to give!" said Emilia, and
opened both her empty hands. She had diverted her mind from the pressure
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