"How many million times she had seen her face, and always with the same imperceptible contraction! She pursed her lips when she looked in the glass. It was to give her face point. That was her self-pointed; dartlike; definite. That was her self when some effort, some call on her to be her self, drew the parts together, she alone knew how different, how incompatible and composed so for the world only into one centre, …showed first 75 words of 671 total…

…showed last 75 words of 671 total…is complex and contradictory, but also has an innate integrity and a wholeness on some level, though in the case of Septimus the whole has become so disparate and fragmented, he can no longer reflect light. But when a person can 'pull themselves together' without being partial to any extreme, who is aware of all their worthy and unworthy parts and impulses then the light of life shines through them as it does a diamond.