"Madeline L' Engle - A Live Coal in the Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Engle Madeleine)

Madeleine L'Engle
8
A Live Coal in the Sea
9
"I am. Tomorrow. I couldn't miss this."
Taxi, followed by a small retinue of adoring students, came over to them and
put
his hand on Raffi's shoulder. "Mom, I have to get on the road. Raffi, you're
coming home for the weekend?"
"Sure, Dad. I'll drive Aunt Frankie to the airport in the morning.
Grandmother,
I'm taking the early train back on Sunday. Can I come have supper with you?"
"Of course. I'll look forward to it."
Camilla said goodbye to her family, went to the door to watch them leave.
None
of the other guests seemed ready to depart. She sighed, and went back to the
crowded room.
Camilla walked rather wearily along the path from the president's house to
her
own. It was only two houses away, for which she was grateful. She had stood
overlong in dressy shoes, and her feet hurt. Her house was one of the white
clapboard ones that dotted the campus in pleasant contrast to the more
institutional brick or stone buildings. She carried the medal in its leather
and
velvet case. Minor honor or not, it still gave her a feeling of being
appreciated and recognized. The evening had been as rewarding as the award,
except for that one brief conversation with Taxi.
Guilt. He could always make her feel full of guilt. Had he been jealous that
all
the attention was on her? Taxi was used to being the center of things, the
sun,
with the planets and the moons circling about his brilliance.
She shrugged it off. Frankie had come, all the way from Seattle. Raffi had
been
like a bright flame amid her cluster of friends. Colleagues, especially in
Camilla's own department, had been genuinely delighted for her. Most of them.
But her department was amazingly free of politics.
She unlocked her door and went into her house, one of the most desirable
faculty
houses on campus. It had originally been lived in and added on to by the
college's one Nobel Prize
winning physicist. She entered the front hall with its wide floorboards, then
turned into the long living room, which was part of the addition, a gracious
room full of books along one side, French windows along the other, and
fireplaces at each end. She had left on a couple of lamps, which she now
turned
off, then went to the kitchen to warm some milk. A mug, of milk with nutmeg
was
a comfortable way to relax when she had been overstimulated. She heated the
milk