Читать книгу The Plumed Serpent. Historical Novel - Life and Love after the Mexico Revolution онлайн

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But she had not got over the shock of horror, fearing the fellow might paw her.

They emerged out of a tunnel in the hollow of the concrete-and-iron amphitheatre. A real gutter-lout came to look at their counterslips, to see which seats they had booked. He jerked his head downwards, and slouched off. Now Kate knew she was in a trap — a big concrete beetle trap.

They dropped down the concrete steps till they were only three tiers from the bottom. That was their row. They were to sit on the concrete, with a loop of thick iron between each numbered seat. This was a reserved place in the ‘Sun.’

Kate sat gingerly between her two iron loops, and looked vaguely around.

‘I think it’s thrilling!’ she said.

Like most modern people, she had a will-to-happiness.

‘Isn’t it thrilling?’ cried Owen, whose will-to-happiness was almost a mania. ‘Don’t you think so, Bud?’

‘Why, yes, I think it may be,’ said Villiers, non-committal.

But then Villiers was young, he was only over twenty, while Owen was over forty. The younger generation calculates its ‘happiness’ in a more business-like fashion. Villiers was out after a thrill, but he wasn’t going to say he’d got one till he’d got it. Kate and Owen — Kate was also nearly forty — must enthuse a thrill, out of a sort of politeness to the great Show-man, Providence.