Читать книгу The Temptress (La tierra de todos) онлайн

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Pretending to be absorbed in reflection, he passed by the door.... Elena and Fontenoy stood talking; their lips scarcely moved as they faced one another, standing very straight, as though they had resolved that no one must guess, from the curves of their lips, what they were saying....

Fontenoy’s rapid glance at him made him regret his curiosity; for this glance moved him as the other had done. It told him so plainly that the man who was looking at him in this fashion was passing through one of the most critical moments of his life. He could almost believe that there was a reproach in his eyes.... “Why does what happens to me interest you if you cannot help me?...”

So he did not walk past the door again. But yielding to an unexplainable impulse that was stronger than his will, he remained close to it, listening.... No, his conduct was not gentlemanly. He was behaving like any one of those scandal-mongers he had been overhearing. Apparently his surroundings were demoralizing him....

It wasn’t easy to catch what those two people on the other side of the door were saying.... In one of the rooms the guests were dancing, in another someone was pounding a piano.... But a few confused words reached him. Fontenoy and Elena were speaking louder now, perhaps because the noise of the piano bothered them, perhaps because of increasing tenseness....