Генри Джеймс - The Jolly Corner

“Well, with such a home—!” But, quite beautifully, she had too much tact to dot so monstrous an i , and it was precisely an illustration of the way she didn’t rattle. How could any one—of any wit—insist on any one else’s “wanting” to live in New York?

“Oh,” he said, “I might have lived here (since I had my opportunity early in life); I might have put in here all these years. Then everything would have been different enough—and, I dare say, ‘funny’ enough. But that’s another matter. And then the beauty of it—I mean of my perversity, of my refusal to agree to a ‘deal’—is just in the total absence of a reason. Don’t you see that if I had a reason about the matter at all it would have to be the other way, and would then be inevitably a reason of dollars? There are no reasons here but of dollars. Let us therefore have none whatever—not the ghost of one.”

They were back in the hall then for departure, but from where they stood the vista was large, through an open door, into the great square main saloon, with its almost antique felicity of brave spaces between windows. Her eyes came back from that reach and met his own a moment. “Are you very sure the ‘ghost’ of one doesn’t, much rather, serve—?”

He had a positive sense of turning pale. But it was as near as they were then to come. For he made answer, he believed, between a glare and a grin: “Oh ghosts—of course the place must swarm with them! I should be ashamed of it if it didn’t. Poor Mrs. Muldoon’s right, and it’s why I haven’t asked her to do more than look in.”

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.