Читать книгу Forbidden Area онлайн

50 страница из 62

He put his hand on her arm. He was so very civilized, Raoul was. She would bet that he never took a girl without verbal permission. "Think it over some more," he said. "I'm going to ask again. Perhaps if we tried it out--"

"Are you sure that what you want isn't simply a twirl with a girl?"

"Plenty of girls in Washington," he said. "What I want is a wife. I'm choosy. I want you."

"That's a very pretty speech," she said. "I'll put the matter on the agenda."

Katharine Hume's apartment was as unorthodox, for a young woman, as her job. Dominating the living room, claiming most of two walls, was an enormous L-shaped desk, built to her specifications from drafting-table boards. Books were stacked on the desk. Books rose to the ceiling above it. Books monopolized most of the remaining wall space, and even narrowed the entrance corridor. From her father she had inherited a miniscule estate but one of the finest private military libraries in the country. She constantly augmented it, and acquired an impressive scientific library of her own. She never loaned a book, she never asked for any other gift, and when in New York she spent her days prowling for books on Fourth Avenue as most women scout for gowns and fur bargains on Fifth. On H-Parity Day she was reading a history of the German General Staff, Nettleship's book on biophthora, and Sturtevant's papers on the same subject. Her furniture, an old-fashioned sofa with graceful lines, a few still-sturdy Hepplewhite chairs, a Queen Anne lowboy--all was from the family house in Alexandria. The furniture seemed adrift, the individual pieces scattered like lifeboats in a sea of books.