"Charles L. Harness - The Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

resemblance."

"It's a dead ringer!" cried a voice.

"'Twinkle, twinkle' is an old continental folk tune," volunteered another. "I once traced it from Haydn's
'Surprise Symphony' back to the fourteenth century."

"Oh, but that's quite impossible," protested Jacques. "Martha has just stated that science discovered it
first, only two hundred years ago."

The woman's voice dripped aqua regia. "You planned this deliberately, just to humiliate me in front of
these...these clowns."

"Martha, I assure you...!"

"I'm warning you for the last time, Ruy. If you ever again humiliate me, I'll probably kill you!"

Jacques backed away in mock alarm until he was swallowed up in a swirl of laughter.

The group broke up, leaving the two women alone. Suddenly aware of Martha Jacques' bitter scrutiny,
Anna flushed and turned toward her.

Martha Jacques said: "Why can't you make him come to his senses? I'm paying you enough."

Anna gave her a slow wry smile. "Then I'll need your help. And you aren't helping when you deprecate
his sense of valuesтАФodd though they may seem to you."

"But Art is really so foolish! ScienceтАФ"

Anna laughed shortly. "You see? Do you wonder he avoids you?"

"What would you do?"

"I?" Anna swallowed dryly.

Martha Jacques was watching her with narrowed eyes. "Yes, you. If you wanted him?"

Anna hesitated, breathing uneasily. Then gradually her eyes widened, became dreamy and full, like
moons rising over the edge of some unknown, exotic land. Her lips opened with a nerveless fatalism. She
didn't care what she said:

"I'd forget that I want, above all things, to be beautiful. I would think only of him. I'd wonder what he's
thinking, and I'd forsake my mental integrity and try to think as he thinks. I'd learn to see through his eyes,
and to hear through his ears. I'd sing over his successes, and hold my tongue when he failed. When he's
moody and depressed, I wouldn't probe or insist that-I-could-help-you-if-you'd-only-let-me. ThenтАФ"

Martha Jacques snorted. "In short, you'd be nothing but a selfless shadow, devoid of personality or any
mind or individuality of your own. That might be all right for one of your type. But for a scientist, the very
thought is ridiculous!"