Leave Her to Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page B

enjoyment.
    He finished the letter and took a chair facing a young woman who was reading — it was this fact which determined his choice of a seat — his own recent novel. Probably half a million people had read the book, or would; but to see some stranger engrossed in one of his novels was an experience of which he never tired, and particularly when as in this case the reader was almost extravagantly beautiful. This girl was small, and her hair was dark, was perhaps black; but it was not straight as black hair is apt to be. It was not straight, but neither was it curly. Rather it seemed to have a playful tendency to curl, as though if permitted it would do so. Her skin was smooth and of an olive hue, with the flush of warm blood just below the surface; and her lips, though they seemed innocent of lipstick, were vivid. Watching them, he thought of a wine jelly which has dried a little and is
lightly crusted over. Her lips looked — he chose the word advisedly, since the choice of words was his delight — delicious, as though if you bit them it would be like biting into a sweetmeat, one of those candies which are filled with a pleasant warming liquid. The tips of her ears, below the soft line of her hair — which was long enough to be knotted at the nape of her neck — were almost as pink as her lips. He had the feeling — permitting his thoughts to range as they chose — that it would be delightful to nibble at them! Her throat was a little paler than her cheek, and her body would be paler still, like a sweetly shaped figurine of old ivory, with round small breasts, and slim waist and gently swelling hips and slender thighs. While he watched her, exotic words drifted across the mirror of his mind as summer clouds drift across the sky; words that bore the flavor of the mysterious East. He remembered the tales in the Arabian Nights, heroines with alabaster brows, and almond eyes, and lips — was it lips? — like pomegranates. He was not at all sure what pomegranates were, and probably that simile was wrong, but its sound pleased him. He thought of myrrh and frankincense and potpourri — or was it patchouli? — and of nameless mysterious fragrances; of sloes, and of clusters of purple grapes, each richly full of blood-red juices which spilled when you crushed them between your teeth.
    The train checked with a jolt that brought him back to — Kansas, to sweeping miles of level wheat lands reaching to the horizon; and he reminded himself with a faint amusement that this was no way to think of a nice girl! Nevertheless most men probably had such thoughts when they looked at a pretty woman. If this were not so, there would presently be an end to the human race!
    However, if this girl chanced to raise her eyes and met his glance and read it, she would be made uncomfortable; so Harland turned his attention to the pages of his neglected book. It was Conrad’s Victory, long familiar. Conrad’s heroine was one of those quietly beautiful but almost bovine women who provoke in man the paternal instinct; but this girl across the aisle, though
she sat perfectly still, was certainly not bovine. Even in her passivity there dwelt something like a flames, as though the very tips of her fingers, if you touched them, must be warm.
    He looked at her again to confirm this impression and saw that she had fallen asleep! The book lay unheeded in her lamp, her relaxed hands barely holding it there. Her head was tipped to one side against the back of her chair, and she was sleeping like a child.
    Harland smiled, amused to find himself astonishingly provoked. So she was bovine, after all! Certainly no one in whom dwelt — he remembered his own phrase — something like a flame would go to sleep over his book! His Book! If his thoughts had affronted her, surely she had now by going to sleep insulted him!
    When the unheeded book slipped off her knees to the floor, thus rousing her, he leaned