"
A strange woman Miss Avies! Maggie had, of course, seen her at
Chapel, but this was the first time that they had been alone
together. Miss Avies was like a thin rod of black metal, erect and
quivering and waiting to strike. Her long sallow face was stiff, not
with outraged virtue, or elaborate pride, or burning scorn, but
simply with the accumulated concentration of fiery determination.
She was the very symbol of self-centred energy, inhuman, cold,
relentless. Her hair was jet black and gleamed like steel, and she
had thick black eyebrows like ink-marks against her forehead of
parchment. Her eyes were dead, like glass eyes, and she had some
false teeth that sometimes clicked in her mouth. She wore a black
dress with no ornament and thin black gloves.
She did not seem, however, to Maggie unkindly, as she stood there,
looking about the room rather short-sightedly. (She would not wear
glasses. Could it have been vanity?) She was not hostile, nor
scornful, nor even patronising . . . but had Maggie been struck
there, dead at her feet she would not have moved a step to help her.
Her voice was ugly, with a crack in it, as though it needed oil.
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