For Love Alone Read Online Free PDF Page A

subject. “Mooning and moaning to herself and it’s evident what it’s about—no one is good enough for her. She hates everything. I love everything. I love everyone. My one prayer, and I pray, though to no vulgar god, is for love.”
    â€œYou disgust me,” said Teresa, lifting her head and looking at him.
    He began to laugh. “Look at her! Pale, haggard, a regular witch. She looks like a beggar. Who would want her! What pride! Pride in rags! Plain Jane on the high horse! When she is an old maid, she’ll still be proud, and noble. No one else will count!”
    The nineteen-year-old said calmly: “I told you I would kill you if you insult me. I will do it with my bare hands. I am not so cowardly as to strike with anything. I know where to press though—I will kill you, father.” With terror, the table had become silent, only Kitty murmured: “Terry! Don’t be silly!” The father turned pale and looked angrily at her.
    â€œYou don’t believe me,” said the girl, “but you should, it’s for your own good. Base coward, hitting your children when they’re small, insulting them when they’re big and saying you’re their father. Base coward—to think,” she said, suddenly rising, with an exalted expression, staring at him and at them all, “I have to live in the house with such a brutal lot, teasing, torturing, making small. I know what to do—keep your yellow blood, I’ll go away, you’ll never see me again and you can laugh and titter to your heart’s content, look over your shoulders at people, snigger and smirk. Do it, but let me live! I’ll go this afternoon and after the wedding, I’ll never come back.”
    The answer to this was a terrifying roar from the father, who knew how to crush these hysterias, and the subdued, frightened girl sank into her place. Presently, she burst into tears, threw herself on the table and shook with sobs. “When we are all suffering so much,” she cried through her hair and folded arms, “you torture us.”
    â€œMeanwhile,” said the beautiful man quietly, “you are letting Kitty do all the work.”
    She rose and went ashamedly to work.
    â€œDry your eyes,” whispered Kitty hastily, “or you’ll look terrible when you go out.” “I have suffered too much,” said Teresa, “I have suffered too much.” But the storm was over.
    Meanwhile, Hawkins sat on the stone seat in the wild front garden, whistling. They came down, their hands still red from washing dishes. He saw them running for the boat, burst into laughter, then suddenly: “How wonderful is marriage—the Song of Songs ... makes the women leap like roes... .”

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The Countless Flaming Eyes of the Flesh
    T he girls looked so strangely different, tearing round the bay, that their father, who was quite proud of their talents, doubled up with laughter as he stood at the gate shouting good-bye and they could hear his ha-ha-ha pursuing them. Everyone that they had known for years turned out and stood up to see them pass, fishermen, shopkeepers, as well as school children and visitors to the bay.
    Kitty, with her neat brown dress, wore brown walking shoes and a turned-up brown sailor hat. Teresa’s remarkable robe flared and floated on the ground and had medieval sleeves, narrow at the shoulder and eighteen inches wide at the wrist; the roses were affixed round this opening. She had high-heeled slippers and an immense palette-shaped hat in champagne colour. Their straight cropped hair, brown and blond, tossed wildly round their sunburnt faces, unpowdered and unrouged; sweat poured down their cheeks.
    The day Malfi March was married, it was hot, past one hundred degrees in the shade at two and growing hotter. It was a brassy andlivid day, come after a year of drought and fierce summer, at the end of February. The air was thick with dust, the smoke of