Читать книгу The Valley of Squinting Windows онлайн

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"It must be the grand and blessed thing for a mother to go to confession to her son. Now wouldn't it be wonderful to think of telling him, as the minister of God's mercy, the little faults she had committed before he was born or before she married his father. Now isn't that the queer thought, Mrs. Brennan?"

She did not reply, and it took all she could marshal of self-possession to protect her from tears as the motor hummed into the village of Kilaconnaghan, where the railway station was. They had arrived well in advance of the train's time. She passed through the little waiting-room and looked into the advertisement for Jameson's Whiskey, which was also a mirror. She remembered that it was in this very room she had waited before going away for that disastrous "honeymoon" with Henry Shannon.... This was a better mirror than the one at home, and she saw that the blaze upon her cheeks had already subdued the power of the powder, making it unnecessary and as the merest dirt upon her face.... The cameo-brooch looked so large and gaudy.... She momentarily considered herself not at all unlike some faded women of the pavement she had seen move, like malignant specters, beneath the lamplight in Dublin city.... She plucked away the brooch from her bosom and thrust it into her pocket. Then she wiped her face clean with her handkerchief.