Читать книгу Pelican Pool. A Novel онлайн

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At last she released her prisoner. Her eyes were shining in the dark. She began to speak in a low, eager voice. She might have been a messenger bringing glad tidings.

"You will never understand what this love has meant to me. You and I—we are different metals refining in the same furnace, and the fire does not treat us alike. My life at last has become easy to live. It is a simple and a grand thing. Think of Dingo Gap or Pelican Pool without sun or flies. Wouldn't they be wonderful places? Well, I find life changed as much as that. The little happenings no more have power to annoy. My eyes are strong to see straight ahead. In all matters I am undisturbed. This love of mine is a holy thing. It will brook no meanness. It will stoop to no crooked ways. Something cries out in my heart to grow and grow. I would bring you a wide-open mind. I would offer you a body as beautiful as that girl we talked of half-an-hour ago."

She began again. "And now, my good friend—yes, you who look at me so fondly—I am going to hurt you a little bit. I am going to tell you you have brought me my moments of sorrow. For a long time now I have known that your love and my love are of different kinds. Bad hours arrived for me once when an evil spirit whispered that you did not understand me, and therefore you could not truly love me. The whisperer said Nature demanded you should go hungering after a woman, and there was no choice but me. The whisperer said until you knew me, and demanded me because of your new knowledge, that my affections were anchored in the sands.