Читать книгу The Perfect World. A romance of strange people and strange places онлайн

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Alan drew a breath of relief. The air seemed purer for her absence, and he looked round him curiously. Low divans furnished the room, and on a wonderful table of crystal was food and wine. He was hungry and faint from his experience in the temple, and he fell to on the repast that had been provided and felt the better for it.

In one corner of the room stood a large jar of bright yellow porcelain, and it was filled with blue, green, yellow and purple fungi—flowers they could not be called—but as fungi they were almost beautiful. Their stems were long and bare of leaf, and the flower bloomed at the very top. Some of the “flowers” were almost like poppy heads, others like variegated mushrooms—while one or two blooms at least reminded Alan most forcibly of the pretty pink seaweed he had admired when on a holiday at Rozel in Jersey. The vividness of colouring made a wonderful effect against the purple background and if his position had not been so hopeless, he would have thoroughly enjoyed his strange adventure.