"Wells, H G - The Door In The Wall, And Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells H G)

--yes. That's all settled. It needn't be talked about yet, but
there's no reason to keep a secret from you . . . . . Yes--thanks!
thanks! But let me tell you my story.

"Then, on that night things were very much in the air. My
position was a very delicate one. I was keenly anxious to get some
definite word from Gurker, but was hampered by Ralphs' presence.
I was using the best power of my brain to keep that light and
careless talk not too obviously directed to the point that concerns
me. I had to. Ralphs' behaviour since has more than justified my
caution . . . . . Ralphs, I knew, would leave us beyond the
Kensington High Street, and then I could surprise Gurker by a
sudden frankness. One has sometimes to resort to these little
devices. . . . . And then it was that in the margin of my field of
vision I became aware once more of the white wall, the green door
before us down the road.

"We passed it talking. I passed it. I can still see the
shadow of Gurker's marked profile, his opera hat tilted forward
over his prominent nose, the many folds of his neck wrap going
before my shadow and Ralphs' as we sauntered past.

"I passed within twenty inches of the door. 'If I say
good-night to them, and go in,' I asked myself, 'what will happen?'
And I was all a-tingle for that word with Gurker.

"I could not answer that question in the tangle of my other
problems. 'They will think me mad,' I thought. 'And suppose I
vanish now!--Amazing disappearance of a prominent politician!' That
weighed with me. A thousand inconceivably petty worldlinesses
weighed with me in that crisis."

Then he turned on me with a sorrowful smile, and, speaking
slowly; "Here I am!" he said.

"Here I am!" he repeated, "and my chance has gone from me.
Three times in one year the door has been offered me--the door that
goes into peace, into delight, into a beauty beyond dreaming, a
kindness no man on earth can know. And I have rejected it,
Redmond, and it has gone--"

"How do you know?"

"I know. I know. I am left now to work it out, to stick to
the tasks that held me so strongly when my moments came. You say,
I have success--this vulgar, tawdry, irksome, envied thing. I have
it." He had a walnut in his big hand. "If that was my success,"
he said, and crushed it, and held it out for me to see.

"Let me tell you something, Redmond. This loss is destroying