"Aldous Huxley - Crome Yellow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huxley Aldous)

something of Anne, perhaps, in the morning-room. That was all.
Among the accumulations of ten generations the living had left
but few traces.

Lying on the table in the morning-room he saw his own book of
poems. What tact! He picked it up and opened it. It was what
the reviewers call "a slim volume." He read at hazard:

"...But silence and the topless dark
Vault in the lights of Luna Park;
And Blackpool from the nightly gloom
Hollows a bright tumultuous tomb."

He put it down again, shook his head, and sighed. "What genius I
had then!" he reflected, echoing the aged Swift. It was nearly
six months since the book had been published; he was glad to
think he would never write anything of the same sort again. Who
could have been reading it, he wondered? Anne, perhaps; he liked
to think so. Perhaps, too, she had at last recognised herself in
the Hamadryad of the poplar sapling; the slim Hamadryad whose
movements were like the swaying of a young tree in the wind.
"The Woman who was a Tree" was what he had called the poem. He
had given her the book when it came out, hoping that the poem
would tell her what he hadn't dared to say. She had never
referred to it.

He shut his eyes and saw a vision of her in a red velvet cloak,
swaying into the little restaurant where they sometimes dined
together in London--three quarters of an hour late, and he at his
table, haggard with anxiety, irritation, hunger. Oh, she was
damnable!

It occurred to him that perhaps his hostess might be in her
boudoir. It was a possibility; he would go and see. Mrs.
Wimbush's boudoir was in the central tower on the garden front.
A little staircase cork-screwed up to it from the hall. Denis
mounted, tapped at the door. "Come in." Ah, she was there; he
had rather hoped she wouldn't be. He opened the door.

Priscilla Wimbush was lying on the sofa. A blotting-pad rested
on her knees and she was thoughtfully sucking the end of a silver
pencil.

"Hullo," she said, looking up. "I'd forgotten you were coming."

"Well, here I am, I'm afraid," said Denis deprecatingly. "I'm
awfully sorry."

Mrs. Wimbush laughed. Her voice, her laughter, were deep and
masculine. Everything about her was manly. She had a large,