IV
Then one man lit a match. She saw a pale strained face, the eyes roving
excitedly above the flickering flame. Then another match was struck, then
another. Those that had no matches struck their briquets, and these burned
with a tiny yellow flame. One or two took down candles and lit them. All
over the room, in little groups, or widely separated, Alexina saw face
after face, white and anxious, appear. The bodies were invisible. The faces
hung, pallid disks, in the dark.
Her attention was suddenly arrested by a face above the small steady flame
of a briquet. It was a thin worn face, probably that of an officer recently
discharged from hospital. His expression was ironic and unperturbed and his
eyes flashed about the room exhibiting a lively curiosity. An Englishman,
probably; nothing there of the severity of the American military
countenance; although, to be sure, that had relaxed somewhat these last
weeks under the blandishments of Paris. Nevertheless...quite apart from
the military, there was the curious unanalyzable difference between the
extremely well-bred American face and the extremely well-bred English
face. It might be that the older civilization did not take itself quite so
seriously....
V
Obeying an impulse, which, she assured herself later, was but the sudden
reaction to frivolity from the horror that had possessed her, she took a
match unceremoniously from the hand of a neighbor, lit it and held it below
her own face.
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