Читать книгу Self Condemned онлайн

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Just in a flash, as he swept across the shadowy hall, he saw the figure at his heels: the hips were placed too low and gave her gait a sexish drag, her neck was too long, which acted as a sort of pole to carry Big Eyes aloft.

Mary's face, Mary's gait did not advertise . . . oh, the horror of our lot. But he was goatish, he knew that: and all Hester was—was the Sandwich woman of his Achilles' heel: with some women a man must feel like a dog with a chicken tied around his neck. But he switched off the tell-tale image, as one switches off the radio when it gets too bad, and thrust his head a fraction higher and quickened his quick dancing step.

But now, driving the smiling Percy back, he entered the drawing-room like a conqueror. When he looked in Mary's face the forecast was favourable, there were no danger signals in her eyes, they just looked at him serenely. As to Percy, he was standing sideways, an eye in the side of his face, a darkly mischievous, mesmerized amusement carrying the gaze outwards to the horizon. Suddenly awakening out of his trance he proposed a drink, and all of them soon stood holding their sherry glasses, containing a wine as near to a tasteless abstraction as the best Rhine wine. Among other things, Percy was a member of the Food and Wine Society. Sherry is the last thing the Englishman learns how to buy.