I do not even care if I never see him again!"
"Then I pardon you," he said gently.
This softened mood lasted for several moments--until he realized that
it had been brought about by processes strikingly lacking in
substance. Abruptly he swung his feet down from the copestone to the
floor of the veranda. "Pardon nothing!" No meek Lucy had thrown
herself in remorse at his feet; and now he pictured her as she
probably really was at this moment: sitting on the white steps of her
own front porch in the moonlight, with red-headed Fred Kinney and
silly Charlie Johnson and four or five others--all of them laughing,
most likely, and some idiot playing the guitar!
George spoke aloud: "Riffraff!"
And because of an impish but all too natural reaction of the mind, he
could see Lucy with much greater distinctness in this vision than in
his former pleasing one. For a moment she was miraculously real
before him, every line and colour of her. He saw the moonlight
shimmering in the chiffon of her skirts brightest on her crossed knee
and the tip of her slipper; saw the blue curve of the characteristic
shadow behind her, as she leaned back against the white step; saw the
watery twinkling of sequins in the gauze wrap over her white shoulders
as she moved, and the faint, symmetrical lights in her black hair--and
not one alluring, exasperating twentieth-of-an-inch of her laughing
profile was spared him as she seemed to turn to the infernal Kinney--
"Riffraff!" And George began furiously to pace the stone floor.
Pages:
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272