She began to dress, choosing clean white clothes in honour of the summer’s day, unpacking her suit-cases, tidying her adorable little room.  She moved about with quick, purposeful steps, her long thin body held up straight, her small face, so much puckered at home with effort and fear, smoothed out.  All she had been and done before this morning, all she had felt and worried about, was gone.  Each of her worries behaved as the image of Mellersh had behaved, and dissolved into colour and light.  And she noticed things she had not noticed for years—­when she was doing her hair in front of the glass she noticed it, and thought, “Why, what pretty stuff.”  For years she had forgotten she had such a thing as hair, plaiting it in the evening and unplaiting it in the morning with the same hurry and indifference with which she laced and unlaced her shoes.  Now she suddenly saw it, and she twisted it round her fingers before the glass, and was glad it was so pretty.  Mellersh couldn’t have seen it either, for he had never said a word about it.  Well, when she got home she would draw his attention to it.  “Mellersh,” she would say, “look at my hair.  Aren’t you pleased you’ve got a wife with hair like curly honey?”

She laughed.  She had never said anything like that to Mellersh yet, and the idea of it amused her.  But why had she not?  Oh yes—­she used to be afraid of him.  Funny to be afraid of anybody; and especially of one’s husband, whom one saw in his more simplified moments, such as asleep, and not breathing properly through his nose.

When she was ready she opened her door to go across to see if Rose, who had been put the night before by a sleepy maidservant into a cell opposite, were awake.  She would say good-morning to her, and then she would run down and stay with that cypress tree till breakfast was ready, and after breakfast she wouldn’t so much as look out of a window till she had helped Rose get everything ready for Lady Caroline and Mrs. Fisher.  There was much to be done that day, settling in, arranging the rooms; she mustn’t leave Rose to do it alone.  They would make it all so lovely for the two to come, have such an entrancing vision ready for them of little cells bright with flowers.  She remembered she had wanted Lady Caroline not to come; fancy wanting to shut some one out of heaven because she thought she would be shy of her!  And as though it mattered if she were, and as though she would be anything so self-conscious as shy.  Besides, what a reason.  She could not accuse herself of goodness over that.  And she remembered she had wanted not to have Mrs. Fisher either, because she had seemed lofty.  How funny of her.  So funny to worry about such little things, making them important.