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

"Do you know him, by the way?" she asked.

"Who?"

"Mr. Barbecue-Smith."

Denis knew of him vaguely. Barbecue-Smith was a name in the
Sunday papers. He wrote about the Conduct of Life. He might
even be the author of "What a Young Girl Ought to Know".

"No, not personally," he said.

"I've invited him for next week-end." She turned over the pages
of the book. "Here's the passage I was thinking of. I marked
it. I always mark the things I like."

Holding the book almost at arm's length, for she was somewhat
long-sighted, and making suitable gestures with her free hand,
she began to read, slowly, dramatically.

"'What are thousand pound fur coats, what are quarter million
incomes?'" She looked up from the page with a histrionic
movement of the head; her orange coiffure nodded portentously.
Denis looked at it, fascinated. Was it the Real Thing and henna,
he wondered, or was it one of those Complete Transformations one
sees in the advertisements?

"'What are Thrones and Sceptres?'"

The orange Transformation--yes, it must be a Transformation--
bobbed up again.

"'What are the gaieties of the Rich, the splendours of the
Powerful, what is the pride of the Great, what are the gaudy
pleasures of High Society?'"

The voice, which had risen in tone, questioningly, from sentence
to sentence, dropped suddenly and boomed reply.

"'They are nothing. Vanity, fluff, dandelion seed in the wind,
thin vapours of fever. The things that matter happen in the
heart. Seen things are sweet, but those unseen are a thousand
times more significant. It is the unseen that counts in Life.'"

Mrs. Wimbush lowered the book. "Beautiful, isn't it?" she said.

Denis preferred not to hazard an opinion, but uttered a non-
committal "H'm."