OUR FRIEND JUDITH
461
Judith is tall, small-breasted, slender. Her light brown hair
is parted in the center and cut straight around her neck. A
high straight forehead, straight nose, a full grave mouth are
setting for her eyes, which are green, large and prominent. Her
lids are very white, fringed with gold, and molded close over
the eyeball, so that in profile she has the look of a staring gilded
mask. The dress was of dark green glistening stuff, cut straight,
with a sort of loose tunic.
It
opened simply at the throat. In it
Judith could of course evoke nothing but classical images.
Diana, perhaps, back from the hunt, in a relaxed moment? A
rather intellectual wood nymph who had opted an afternoon
in the British Museum reading room? Something like that.
Neither Betty nor I said a word, since Judith was examining
herself in a long mirror, and must know she looked magnifi–
cent.
Slowly she drew off the dress and laid it aside. Slowly
she put on the old cord skirt and woolen blouse she had taken
off. She must have surprised a resigned glance between us, for
she then remarked, with the smallest of mocking smiles: "One
surely ought to stay in character, wouldn't you say?" She
added, reading the words out of some invisible book, written
not by her, since it was a very vulgar book, but perhaps by
one of us: "It does everything
for
me, I must admit."
"Mter seeing you in it," Betty cried out, defying her, "I
can't bear for anyone else to have it. I shall simply put it
away." Judith shrugged, rather irritated. In the shapeless skirt
and blouse, and without makeup, she stood smiling at us, a
woman at whom forty-nine out of fifty people would not
look twice.
A second revelatory incident occurred soon after. Betty
telephoned me to say that Judith had a kitten. Did I know
that Judith adored cats? "No, but of course she would," I said.
Betty lived in the same street as Judith and saw more
of her than I did. I was kept posted about the growth and
habits of the cat and its effect on Judith's life. She remarked
