Madame Lintoff

Madame Lintoff is the Russian woman whose single glance across a room answers Miriam's too-ready smile and then fades at once, a radiance that promises recognition and withdraws it. She has escaped the confines of her tribe and sex into a European world of ideas, and is weary of it; she looked impersonally, found a blankness, and will not enquire again. She matters because that first revealing encounter closes the way between the two women before a word is spoken, and the evening's dimming begins there.