"Robert F. Young - The Dandelion Girl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

"But according to my father's concept, the book of time has already been written. From a macrocosmic
viewpoint, my father says, everything that is going to happen has already happened. Therefore, if a
person from the future participates in a past event, he becomes a part of that event—for the simple
reason that he was a part of it in the first place—and a paradox cannot possibly arise."

Mark took a deep drag on his pipe. He needed it. "Your father sounds like quite a remarkable person,"
he said.

"Oh, he is!" Enthusiasm deepened the pinkness of her cheeks, brightened the blueness of her eyes. "You
wouldn't believe all the books he's read, Mr. Randolph. Why, our apartment is bursting with them! Hegel
and Kant and Hume; Einstein and Newton and Weizsäcker. I've—I've even read some of them myself."
"I gathered as much. As a matter of fact, so have I."

She gazed raptly up into his face. "How wonderful, Mr. Randolph," she said. "I'll bet we've got just scads
of mutual interests!"

The conversation that ensued proved conclusively that they did have—though the transcendental esthetic,
Berkeleianism and relativity were rather incongruous subjects for a man and a girl to be discussing on a
September hilltop, he reflected presently, even when the man was forty-four and the girl was twenty-one.
But happily there were compensations—their animated discussion of the transcendental esthetic did more
than elicit a priori and a posteriori conclusions, it also elicited microcosmic stars in her eyes; their
breakdown of Berkeley did more than point up the inherent weaknesses in the good bishop's theory, it
also pointed up the pinkness of her cheeks; and their review of relativity did more than demonstrate that
E invariably equals mc2; it also demonstrated that far from being an impediment, knowledge is an asset to
feminine charm.

The mood of the moment lingered far longer than it had any right to, and it was still with him when he
went to bed. This time he didn't even try to think of Anne; he knew it would do no good. Instead he lay
there in the darkness and played host to whatever random thoughts came along—and all of them
concerned a September hilltop and a girl with dandelion-colored hair.

Day before yesterday I saw a rabbit, and yesterday a deer, and today, you.

Next morning he drove over to the hamlet and checked at the post office to see if he had any mail. There
was none. He was not surprised. Jeff disliked writing letters as much as he did, and Anne, at the moment,
was probably incommunicado. As for his practice, he had forbidden his secretary to bother him with any
but the most urgent of matters.

He debated on whether to ask the wizened postmaster if there was a family named Danvers living in the
area. He decided not to. To have done so would have been to undermine the elaborate make-believe
structure which Julie had built, and even though he did not believe in the structure's validity, he could not
find it in his heart to send it toppling.

That afternoon she was wearing a yellow dress the same shade as her hair, and again his throat tightened
when he saw her, and again he could not speak. But when the first moment passed and words came, it
was all right, and their thoughts flowed together like two effervescent brooks and coursed gaily through
the arroyo of the afternoon. This time when they parted, it was she who asked, "Will you be here
tomorrow?"—though only because she stole the question from his lips—and the words sang in his ears all
the way back through the woods to the cabin and lulled him to sleep after an evening spent with his pipe
on the porch.