Manchurian Books

I put off the encounter until the Sunday after,
to get myself in order. I had a morning coat made and I bought a silk
hat, and had my reward in the first glance of admiration she ever gave
me. I wonder how many of my sex are as preposterous. I was, you see,
abandoning all my beliefs, my conventions unasked. I was forgetting
myself immensely. And there was a conscious shame in it all. Never a
word--did I breathe to Ewart--to any living soul of what was going on.
Her father and mother and aunt struck me as the dismalest of people,
and her home in Walham Green was chiefly notable for its black and
amber tapestry carpets and curtains and table-cloths, and the age and
irrelevance of its books, mostly books with faded gilt on the covers.
The windows were fortified against the intrusive eye by cheap lace
curtains and an "art pot" upon an unstable octagonal table. Several
framed Art School drawings of Marion's, bearing official South
Kensington marks of approval, adorned the room, and there was a black
and gilt piano with a hymn-book on the top of it.


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