She came toward him smiling. He had always rather liked her smile. It
was quiet. It never broke up, as it were, her brooding face. He had
noticed that it didn't even part her lips or make them thinner. If
anything it made them thicker, it curved still more the crushed bow of
the upper lip and the pensive sweep of the lower. But it opened doors;
it lit lights. It broadened quite curiously the rather too broad
nostrils; it set the wide eyes wider; it brought a sudden blue
into their thick gray. In her cheeks it caused a sudden leaping
and spreading of their flame. Her rather high and rather prominent
cheek-bones gave character and a curious charm to Mary's face; they
had the effect of lifting her bloom directly under the pure and candid
gray of her eyes, leaving her red mouth alone in its dominion. That
mouth with its rather too long upper lip and its almost perpetual
brooding was saved from immobility by its alliance with her nostrils.
Such was Mary's face. Rowcliffe had often watched it, acknowledging
its charm, while he said to himself that for him it could never have
any meaning or fascination, any more than Mary could. There wasn't
much in Mary's face, and there wasn't much in Mary. She was too
ruminant, too tranquil. He sometimes wondered how much it would take
to trouble her.
And yet there were times when that tranquillity was soothing. She had
always, even when Ally was at her worst, smiled at him as if nothing
had happened or could happen, and she smiled at him as if nothing had
happened now.
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