Читать книгу An Affair of State онлайн

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He wondered how a girl with such irregular features could appear so beautiful. She had none of the vacant, antiseptic loveliness that the back pages of magazines made Americans in the middle of the century accept as beauty. But the eyes of the men at other tables were drawn away from their own women, and towards her. "How is it," he inquired, "that you were free tonight? I'm very happy that you are, but it doesn't seem logical."

"In the first place, don't you realize that there are a hundred thousand more women than men in Washington?"

"And in the second place?"

"In the second place, I don't sleep around, and I'm not getting married."

"You're human, aren't you?"

She didn't reply at once. She tapped her cigarette into the clamshell, and then cocked her head to one side in a way she had, as if this was a difficult and almost an unfair question. "There are two answers to that," she said finally. "The first is that I wish I could show you how human I am. The second is that I can't."

"That's no answer. That's a riddle."