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

Eyes glinted at her out of pasty whiteness. "That was quite a pasтАФonly more de seul than de deux," said
The Student.

She looked about in uneasy wonder.

They were sitting together on a marble bench before a fountain. Behind them was a curved walk
bounded by a high wall covered with climbing green, dotted here and there with white.

She put her hand to her forehead. "Where are we?"

"This is White Rose Park."

"How did I get here?"

"You danced in on your own two feet through the archway yonder."

"I don't remember..."

"I thought perhaps you were trying to lend a bit of realism to the part. But you're early."

"What do you mean?"

"There are only white roses growing in here, and even they won't be in full bloom for another month. In
late June they'll be a real spectacle. You mean you didn't know about this little park?"

"No. I've never even been in the Via before. And yet..."

"And yet what?"

She hadn't been able to tell anyoneтАФnot even Matt BellтАФwhat she was now going to tell this man, an
utter stranger, her companion of an hour. He had to be told because, somehow, he too was caught up in
the dream ballet.

She began haltingly. "Perhaps I do know about this place. Perhaps someone told me about it, and the
information got buried in my subconscious mind until I wanted a white rose. There's really something
behind my ballet that Dr. Bell didn't tell you. He couldn't, because I'm the only one who knows. The
Rose music comes from my dreams. Only, a better word is nightmares. Every night the score starts from
the beginning. In the dream, I dance. Every night, for months and months, there was a little more music, a
little more dancing. I tried to get it out of my head, but I couldn't. I started writing it down, the music and
the choreography."

The man's unsmiling eyes were fixed on her face in deep absorption.

Thus encouraged, she continued. "For the past several nights I have dreamed almost the complete ballet,
right up to the death of the nightingale. I suppose I identify myself so completely with the nightingale that I
subconsciously censor her song as she presses her breast against the thorn on the white rose. That's
where I always awakened, or at least, always did before tonight. But I think I heard the music tonight. It's
a series of chords...thirty-eight chords, I believe. The first nineteen were frightful, but the second nineteen
were marvelous. Everything was too real to wake up. The Student, The Nightingale, The White Roses."