"Patricia A. McKillip - The Snow Queen" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

eyes. He offered her his arm; after a moment she figured out what to
do with it. "You need a glass of champagne." He patted her hand
gently. "Come with me."
"You see, I hate parties."
"Ah."


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The Snow Queen


"And Kay loves them."
"And you," he said, threading a sure path among satin and silk and
clouds of tulle, "love Kay."
"I have always loved Kay."
"And now you feel he might stop loving you? So you come here to
please him."
"How quickly you understand things. But I'm not sure if he is
pleased that I came. We used to know each other so well. Now I
feel stupid around him, and slow, and plain, even when he tells me
I'm not. It used to be different between us."
"When?"
She shrugged. "Before. Before the city began taking little pieces of
him away from me. He used to bring me wildflowers he had picked
in the park. Now he gives me blood-red roses once a year. Some
days his eyes never see me, not even in bed. I see contracts in his
eyes, and the names of restaurants, expensive shoes, train schedules.
A train schedule is more interesting to him than I am."
"To become interesting, you must be interested."
"In Kay? Or in trains?"
"If," he said, "you can no longer tell the difference, perhaps it is
Kay who has grown uninteresting."
"Oh, no," she said quickly. "Never to me." She had flushed. With
the quick, warm color in her face and the light spilling from the icy
prisms onto her hair, into her eyes, she caused Maurice Crow to
hold her glass too long under the champagne fountain. "He is
beautiful and brilliant, and we have loved each other since we were

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children. But it seems that, having grown up, we no longer
recognize one another." She took the overflowing glass from
Maurice Crow's hand and drained it. Liquid from the dripping glass
fell beneath her chaste neckline, rolled down her breast like icy
tears. "We are both in disguise."