(no subject)
Julia wore the embroidered Chinese robe which she often used when we were dining alone at Brideshead; it was a robe whose weight and stiff folds stressed her repose; her neck rose exquisitely from the plain gold circle at her throat; her hands lay still among the dragons in her lap. It was thus that I had rejoiced to see her nights without number, and that night, watching her as she sat between the firelight and the shaded lamp, unable to look away for love of her beauty, I suddenly thought,
When else have I seen her like this? Why am I reminded of another moment of vision?
And it came back to me that this was how she had looked; and I realized that she had regained what I thought she had lost for ever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say,
"Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?"
- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited