Читать книгу A Furnace of Earth онлайн

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“Margaret! Ardee, dear! Look at me!”

Her eyes flowed into his. From a blur under cloud-pale eyelids, they had turned to violet balls, shot through with a trembling light. The look she gave him melted over him in a rage of love. Desire bordered it, a smile dipped in it, promise made it golden, and he saw his own longing painted in it as a pilgrim sees his reflection in a slumbering pool.

She clasped her hands on his head, pushing back his cloth cap, and framing his face in the long, sweeping oval of her arms. He could feel little vibrant thrills in her fingers. He held her tightly, masterfully, first at arm’s length, laughing into her wide eyes, and then close, folding her, pressing her hair with his hands.

The leaves from the roses she wore fell in splotches of deep red, sprinkling the brown-veined sand at their feet; the dense, bruised odor, mixed with the salty breath of seaweed, seemed to fill and choke all her swaying senses.

“It is like a storm!” she said. “I have dreamed of it coming at the last gently, like a bright morning, but it isn’t like that! It seemed as if that were the way it would come to me—like a still, small voice—but it isn’t! It’s the wind and the earthquake and the fire! Oh!” she said, drawing her breath in a long, shuddering inhalation. “Do you smell that rose-scent? Did ever any roses smell like that? They—they make me dizzy! Feel me tremble.”