A Spy in the House of Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

huntress, the
invulnerable woman, and it had offended her!)
    When he saw she did not share his laughter, he
became serious, lying at her side, but she was still offended and her heart
continued to beat loudly with stage fright.
    “I have to go back,” she said, rising and
shaking the sand off with vehemence.
    With immediate gallantry he rose, denoting a
long habit of submission to women’s whims. He rose and dressed himself, swung
his leather bag over his shoulder and walked beside her, ironically courteous,
impersonal, unaffected.
    After a moment he said: “Would you like to meet
me for dinner at the Dragon?”
    “Not for dinner but later, yes. About ten or
eleven.”
    He again bowed, ironically, and walked with
cool eyes beside her. His nonchalance irritated her. He walked with such full
assurance that he ultimately always obtained his desire, and she hated this
assurance, she envied it.
    When they reached the beach town everyone
turned to gaze at them. The Bright Messenger, she thought, from the Black
Forest of the fairy tales. Breathing deeply, expanding his wide chest, walking
very straight, and then this festive smile which made her feel gay and light.
She was proud of walking at his side, as if bearing a trophy. As a woman she
was proud in her feminine vanity, in her love of conquest. This vainglorious
walk gave her an illusion of strength and power: she had charmed, won, such a
man. She felt heightened in her own eyes, while knowing this sensation was not
different than drunkenness, and that it would vanish like the ecstasies of
drink, leaving her the next day even more shaky, even weaker at the core,
deflated, defeated, possessing nothing within herself.
    The core, where she felt a constant unsureness , this structure always near collapse, which
could so easily be shattered by a harsh word, a slight, a criticism, which
floundered before obstacles, was haunted by the image of catastrophe, by the
same obsessional forebodings which she heard in Ravel’s Waltz.
    The waltz leading to catastrophe: swirling in
spangled airy skirts, on polished floors, into an abyss, the minor notes
simulating lightness, a mock dance, the minor notes always recalling that man’s
destiny was ruled by ultimate darkness.
    This core of Sabina’s was temporarily supported
by an artificial beam, the support of vanity’s satisfaction when this man so
obviously handsome walked by her side, and everyone who saw him envied the
woman who had charmed him.
    When they separated he bowed over her hand in a
European manner, with mock respect, but his voice was warm when he repeated:
“You will come?” When none of his handsomeness, perfection and nonchalance had
touched her, this slight hesitation did. Because he was for a moment uncertain,
she felt him for a moment as a human being, a little closer to her when not
altogether invulnerable.
    She said: “Friends are waiting for me.”
    Then a slow to unfold but utterly dazzling
smile illumined his face as he stood to his full height and saluted: “Change of
guards at Buckingham Palace!”
    By his tone of irony she knew he did not expect
her to be meeting friends but most probably another man, another lover.
    He would not believe that she wanted to return
to her room to wash the sand out of her hair, to put oil over her sunburnt
skin, to paint a fresh layer of polish on her nails, to relive every step of
their encounter as she lay in the bath, in her habit of wanting to taste the
intoxications of experience not once but twice.
    To the girl she shared the room with she owed
but a slight warning that she would be out that evening, but on this particular
evening there was a third person staying with them for just one night, and this
woman was a friend of Alan as well as hers; so her departure would be more
complicated. Once more she would have to steal ecstasy and rob the night of its
intoxications. She waited until they were both asleep and went silently out,
but did not go towards the main street