Читать книгу Wintersmoon онлайн

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Miraculously they did not. They lived, both of them, quite outside the gossiping world of modern London, and Wildherne was too well liked for anyone to think it worth his or her while to carry tales. All London knew. He was by no means Diana's first lover, nor would he be the last. Wildherne did not blind himself to this, nor did Diana attempt to hide anything, but when the six months were over and she loved him no longer, and told him so, he suffered tortures only possible for the constant lover. She wished that he would not be so constant. She was often bored with him. And yet she liked him. She often wished that she did not.

He was on his way now to tell her about Janet.

He feared, most deeply, this interview. He feared it because he knew even now as he drove to Charles Street that with every step nearer to Diana Janet's image was fading. As he went up in the lift Janet vanished. There was left only a promise, a message, a given word. And yet Diana's sitting-room was as colourless as it always was. The wallpaper was of a stiff dull bronze. There was only one picture, a Walter Sickert oil of one of his Montmartre music-halls, smoky grey with a spread of dingy red, out of which twisted faces supported by crooked arms emerged. The only other ornament was a dark Epstein bronze of a woman whose eyes were full of longing, hatred, and chagrin. There was a piano; there was a long bookcase crammed untidily with foreign books in paper covers. In a chair covered with a dark green tapestry Diana was sitting. Her faint hair, pale face, and dress of dark red-gold were as still and quiet as a pool in an autumn wood. The eyes of the Epstein woman were the only things in the room that had movement.