Читать книгу White Magic. A Novel онлайн

35 страница из 64

“Do you think I could be different?” she asked, waiting in a sort of breathlessness for his answer.

“I’ve not thought about it,” was his depressing answer. “Offhand I should say not. You’re at the age when almost everybody does a little thinking. But that’ll soon stop, and you’ll be what you were molded to be from babyhood.”

“I know I don’t amount to much,” said she humbly. “Out there—under the black magic—I’m vain and proud. But here—I feel I’m just nothing.”

“You’re a superb model,” said he consolingly. “Really—superb.”

“Please don’t mock at me. Honestly, don’t you think I’m commonplace?”

He gave her that fine, gentle smile of his, particularly fine coming from such a big, masculine sort of man. And he said, “Nothing that the sun shines on is commonplace.”

She developed strong curiosity as to the general aspects of his affairs—as to his hopes and fears for the future. Her efforts to draw him out on these subjects amused him. His frank confession that he was unknown in America threw her quite off the track; it never occurred to her that he might be known abroad. “And you have worked many years?” she said.