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

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At first he felt vaguely that his sense of disappointment had to do with herself. Not that he had expected anything dazzling, or indeed had given her consciously any thought at all. The male creature, of course, hearing the name of a girl he is about to meet, instinctively conjures up a picture to suit her name. He cannot help himself. And Joan Nicholson, apart from any deliberate process of thought or desire on his part, hardly suited the picture that had thus spontaneously formed in his mind. The woman seemed too big for the picture. He had seen her, perhaps, hitherto, only through his sister's eyes. It puzzled him. About her, mysteriously as an invisible garment, was the atmosphere of things bigger, grander, finer than he had expected; nobler than he quite understood.

Ah, now, at last, he was getting at it. The vague sense of disappointment was not with her; it was with himself. Tested by some new standard her mere presence had subtly introduced into the room—into his intuitive mind—he had become suddenly dissatisfied with himself. His play with the children, he remembered feeling, had seemed all at once insignificant, unreal, almost unworthy—compared to another larger order of things her presence had suggested, if not actually revealed.