Читать книгу The Complete Works of Algernon Blackwood. Novels, Short Stories, Horror Classics, Occult & Supernatural Tales, Plays онлайн

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He only knew—and knew it with a sacred wonder that was akin to worship—that women, like the angels, were beyond his reach and beyond his understanding. Comely they all were to him. He looked up to them in his thoughts, not for their reason or strength, but for the subtlety of their intuition, their power of sacrifice, and last but not least, for the beauty and grace of their mere presence in a world that was so often ugly and unclean.

'The flame—the lamp—the glory—whatever it may be called—keeps alight in their faces,' he loved to say to himself, 'almost to the end. With men it is gone at thirty—often at twenty.'

And his sister, for all her light hold on life, and the strain in her that in his simplicity he regarded as rather 'worldly,' was no exception to the rule. He thought her entirely good and wonderful, and, perhaps, so far as she went, he was not too egregiously mistaken. He looked for the best in everybody, and so, of course, found it.

'Only she will never make much of me, or I of her, I'm afraid,' he thought as he leaned out of the window, watching the scented darkness. 'We shall get along best by leaving each other alone and being affectionate, so to speak, from a distance.'