"Шервуд Андерсен. Триумф яйца (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

telephone down and prepared to go home. 'If I want my servant out of
the apartment it is because I do not want him to hear me talk with the
woman. I cannot be rude to her. I will have to make some kind of an
explanation,' I said to myself.

"The woman came at seven o'clock, and, as you may have guessed, I let
her in and forgot the resolution I had made. It is likely I never had
any intention of doing anything else. There was a bell on my door, but
she did not ring, but knocked very softly. It seems to me that
everything she did that evening was soft and quiet, but very determined
and quick. Do I make myself clear? When she came I was standing just
within the door where I had been standing and waiting for a half hour.
My hands were trembling as they had trembled in the morning when her
eyes looked at me and when I tried to put the pennies on the counter in
the store. When I opened the door she stepped quickly in and I took her
into my arms. We stood together in the darkness. My hands no longer
trembled. I felt very happy and strong.

"Although I have tried to make everything clear I have not told you
what the woman I married is like. I have emphasized, you see, the other
woman. I make the blind statement that I love my wife, and to a man of
your shrewdness that means nothing at all. To tell the truth, had I not
started to speak of this matter I would feel more comfortable. It is
inevitable that I give you the impression that I am in love with the
tobacconist's wife. That's not true. To be sure I was very conscious of
her all during the week before my marriage, but after she had come to
me at my apartment she went entirely out of my mind.

"Am I telling the truth? I am trying very hard to tell what happened to
me. I am saying that I have not since that evening thought of the woman
who came to my apartment. Now, to tell the facts of the case, that is
not true. On that evening I went to my fiancee at nine, as she had
asked me to do in her letter. In a kind of way I cannot explain the
other woman went with me. This is what I mean--you see I had been
thinking that if anything happened between me and the tobacconist's
wife I would not be able to go through with my marriage. 'It is one
thing or the other with me,' I had said to myself.

"As a matter of fact I went to see my beloved on that evening filled
with a new faith in the outcome of our life together. I am afraid I
muddle this matter in trying to tell it. A moment ago I said the other
woman, the tobacconist's wife, went with me. I do not mean she went in
fact. What I am trying to say is that something of her faith in her own
desires and her courage in seeing things through went with me. Is that
clear to you? When I got to my fiancee's house there was a crowd of
people standing about. Some were relatives from distant places I had
not seen before. She looked up quickly when I came into the room. My
face must have been radiant. I never saw her so moved. She thought her
letter had affected me deeply, and of course it had. Up she jumped and
ran to meet me. She was like a glad child. Right before the people who