After the Fireworks Read Online Free PDF Page B

discomposed into a child-like embarrassment. The blood tingled painfully in her cheeks. Oh, what a fool, she thought, what a fool shewas making of herself! This idiotic blushing! But the way he had turned round on her, as if he were going to bite. . . . Still, even that was no excuse for blushing and saying she was sorry, as though she were still at school and he were Miss Huss. Idiot! she inwardly shouted at herself. And making an enormous effort, she readjusted her still scarlet face, giving it as good an expression of smiling nonchalance as she could summon up. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, in a voice that was meant to be light, easy, ironically polite, but which came out (oh, idiot, idiot!) nervously shaky and uneven. “I’m afraid I disturbed you. But I just wanted to introduce . . . I mean, as you were passing . . .”
    â€œBut how charming of you!” said Fanning, who had had time to realize that this latest piece of impertinence was one to be blessed, not damned. “Charming!” Yes, charming it was, that young face with the grey eyes and the little straight nose, like a cat’s and the rather short upper lip. And the heroic way she had tried, through all her blushes, to be the accomplished woman of the world—that too was charming. And touchingly charming even were those rather red, large-wristed English hands, which she wasn’t yet old enough to have learnt the importance of tending into whiteness and softness. They were still the hands of a child, a tomboy. He gave her one of those quick, those brilliantly and yet mysteriously significant smiles of his; those smiles that were still so youthfully beautiful when they came spontaneously. But they could also be put on; he knew how to exploit their fabricated charm, deliberately. To a sensitive eye, the beauty of his expression was, on these occasions, subtly repulsive.
    Reassured, “I’m Pamela Tarn,” said the young girl, feeling warm with gratitude for the smile. He was handsomer,she was thinking, than in his photographs. And much more fascinating. It was a face that had to be seen in movement.
    â€œPamela Tarn?” he repeated questioningly.
    â€œThe one who wrote you a letter.” Her blush began to deepen again. “You answered so nicely. I mean, it was so kind . . . I thought . . .”
    â€œBut of course!” he cried, so loudly, that people looked round, startled. “Of course!” He took her hand and held it, shaking it from time to time, for what seemed to Pamela hours. “The most enchanting letter. Only I’m so bad at names. So you’re Pamela Tarn.” He looked at her appraisingly. She returned his look for a moment, then flinched away in confusion from his bright dark eyes.
    â€œExcuse me,” said a chilly voice; and a very large suit of plus fours edged past them to the door.
    â€œI like you,” Fanning concluded, ignoring the plus fours; she uttered an embarrassed little laugh. “But then, I liked you before. You don’t know how pleased I was with what you said about the difference between English and Italian women.” The colour rose once more into Pamela’s cheeks. She had only written those sentences after long hesitation and had written them then recklessly, dashing them down with a kind of anger, just because Miss Huss would have been horrified by their unwomanliness, just because Aunt Edith would have found them so distressing, just because they had, when she spoke them aloud one day in the streets of Florence, so shocked the two schoolmistresses from Boston whom she had met at the pension and was doing the sights with. Fanning’s mention of them pleased her and at the same time made her feel dreadfully guilty. She hoped he wouldn’t be too specific about those differences; it seemed toher that every one was listening. “So profound,” he went on in his musical ringing voice. “But out of the mouths of babes, with