ABSTRACT
Sylvia caught sight of herself in the long mirror as, enjoying the stretch of muscle, she rose from kneeling to pack one of her new evening dresses – the blue one, for she wanted to wear the rose coloured one that night. She had been too much absorbed in fitting tissue paper into its interstices as she folded, to notice the delicate rain begin to walk softly, like a spider, down the windowpane, to increase, to run more heavily, a faster procession of many spiders, to become a steady downpour: and so it came to her with an unexpected, cold shock, to see how pale her face was, how grey the light that held her, a tired, flattish reflection, in the stiff oblong of glass.
