Clare gave the camera one quick exasperated glance when the doorbell rang and the guests arrived. The food should have been ready but she was still chopping hurriedly amid a debris of vegetable leavings, her fingers stuck with parsley bits. —Oh, Toby, stop it! Her deep glance at the camera—she has looked at the lens and not at Toby, as if it were his eyes—is caught forever on the tape. She is wishing she had had time to change into the nicer clothes she had planned. Her hair is in a short thick black plait on her shoulder fastened with a rubber band. She looks tired. When she is tired (she believes) all those things that at her best make her look like an intellectual instead make her look like a librarian: small eyes, neat straight brows, thin lips, a square high forehead. She has good skin but it is pink and hot because she is flustered. Her glance is naked and hostile, her last moment of free expression before she has to put on a smiling face. She might be hostile to Toby; she is sometimes bossy and arbitrary with him.
