"Conrad, Joseph - Within The Tides" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

The Editor then, after expressing his regret that he had not been
able to come, wanted to know if the party had been entertaining.

Renouard regretted that his friend had not been there. Being a man
whose business or at least whose profession was to know everything
that went on in this part of the globe, he could probably have told
him something of some people lately arrived from home, who were
amongst the guests. Young Dunster (Willie), with his large shirt-
front and streaks of white skin shining unpleasantly through the
thin black hair plastered over the top of his head, bore down on
him and introduced him to that party, as if he had been a trained
dog or a child phenomenon. Decidedly, he said, he disliked Willie
- one of these large oppressive men. . . .

A silence fell, and it was as if Renouard were not going to say
anything more when, suddenly, he came out with the real object of
his visit to the editorial room.

"They looked to me like people under a spell."

The Editor gazed at him appreciatively, thinking that, whether the
effect of solitude or not, this was a proof of a sensitive
perception of the expression of faces.

"You omitted to tell me their name, but I can make a guess. You
mean Professor Moorsom, his daughter and sister - don't you?"

Renouard assented. Yes, a white-haired lady. But from his
silence, with his eyes fixed, yet avoiding his friend, it was easy
to guess that it was not in the white-haired lady that he was
interested.

"Upon my word," he said, recovering his usual bearing. "It looks
to me as if I had been asked there only for the daughter to talk to
me."

He did not conceal that he had been greatly struck by her
appearance. Nobody could have helped being impressed. She was
different from everybody else in that house, and it was not only
the effect of her London clothes. He did not take her down to
dinner. Willie did that. It was afterwards, on the terrace. . . .

The evening was delightfully calm. He was sitting apart and alone,
and wishing himself somewhere else - on board the schooner for
choice, with the dinner-harness off. He hadn't exchanged forty
words altogether during the evening with the other guests. He saw
her suddenly all by herself coming towards him along the dimly
lighted terrace, quite from a distance.