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'. What's her name?
'The Singapore girl? Marie-Laure. Marie-Laure Auboyer. But really, A
'Have you got a picture of her?
'Yes, but look here —’
'Could I see it?
'I haven't got it with me I' said Felix, his voice rising. 'But I tell you that's all over I' Then he murmured' Sorry.
What am I saying? thought A
'I startled you —’ he said. 'I'm a brute. I think I will stay in England, if you don't mind. Perhaps I ought just to have waited without telling you I was waiting. But I assure you I'm not at all encouraged. I hope nothing and I expect nothing. I only ask you to let me see you a little and help you a little. I want the joy of serving you, even if it only lasts for a while. I want it, and I feel that because I love you I have a kind of right to it.
They both got up and stood rather stiffly beside their chairs. It was the moment of departure. A
Felix moved after her towards the door. Then they stopped and stared at each other. A
It was not that she had suddenly ceased to love Randall. But she was certainly able now, if she relaxed her grip for a moment, to fall in love with Felix. She felt a terrible weakness at the knees. Did love really come upon one like this? Yet this love had been long enough in preparation. Was this falling in love? It was certainly falling. Falling. Falling. She held on to the back of a chair. As Felix inclined his head and began to move on in the direction of the door she realized with anguish that he was going to go without kissing her.
Chapter Twenty-six
PENN GRAHAM found the behaviour of his English relations really incomprehensible. His uncle Randall had gone off publicly with another woman. Yet everyone was behaving quite calmly and cheerfully as if nothing had happened. Even Miranda, though restless and rather sulky, was scarcely more so than usual. Pe
They were over at Seton Blaise. Humphrey, Mildred and Felix were all in evidence, and A
His first feeling on realizing that he was in love with Miranda was a certain sense of achievement. He too, Pe
The next morning to which he woke with an undifferentiated sense of bliss, produced however, as it wore on, a state of mind somewhat less solipsistic. Pe
What this conjunction would, exactly, consist in was less clear to him nor did he give it thought. He did not avert his attention from the problem of sexual desire, the problem simply did not exist for him. His image of Miranda rose like a column of flame from the pure re-created form of his new life, and he and she existed in a golden haze of love and worship and diffused desire. And in so far as he precisely pictured himself at all as keeping company with the new Miranda, he saw them wandering eternally hand in hand in some flower-scattered field of bliss.
He absented himself from breakfast that morning, partly because he felt that if he ate anything he would be sick, and partly because he wanted to see Miranda in a more spiritual atmosphere than that induced by questions about eggs and cornflakes. He wandered instead upon the lawn, waiting for her to come out, as she always did after breakfast, to see if her hedgehogs had eaten up their bread and milk in the night. When she did appear he approached her, spoke to her, followed her. She was, as usual, detached and impish, full of the rather malicious gaiety which had confounded Pe
Pe
The real world however was a thorny place. Pe