Three sheer and cunningly landscaped terraces dropped down from what was
actually the rear of the house, but which overhung the river, so that,
stepping out of the car, an unsuspected, breath-taking panorama of river
wound itself, at that moment the Albany boat moving upstream,
light-studded.
ZOE (out at a bound): "Oh! Oh! Oh! Isolde's garden. Tristan, where are
you?"
"Here."
"I want to kiss a star--that luscious one up there."
"Let me be proxy."
"Lilly, chastise him!"
She smiled at him with her tortured eyes.
"Like it?" he said, smiling back at her with something impersonal in his
eyes that deadened her. "All this formality is hardly my choice; it's
Pauline's idea."
They were met by Pauline--known to Zoe and her mother through
perfunctory office meetings. She was exceedingly petite, rather
appealingly so in her widowhood, and of her younger brother's rather
Spanish darkness, except for a graying coiffure worn high and
flatteringly.
There were seventeen years between them and yet her shoulders were
deeply white, and rose, quite unwithered, out of a jetted evening gown;
and her profile, also with the heat lightning of a scarcely perceptible
nervous quiver to it, entirely without the sag of tired flesh.
Pages:
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568