The Chinese Shawl Read Online Free PDF Page A

should probably burst into flames.”
    Carey allowed himself to laugh. He had been wanting to for some time.
    “What happens if I ask you why? Does that have the same effect?”
    “I don’t know. It might.” She put up a hand to her cheek and could feel it burning right through the glove. She looked at him with a hint of distress. “I am being perfectly horrid. I’d better go home.”
    He slipped a hand inside her arm.
    “What’s the matter? Did he upset you?”
    All at once Laura could laugh. She said,
    “Oh, not like that. It was just a stupid business thing.”
    “Want to talk about it?”
    He got another look—a very frank one this time.
    “I want to, but I don’t know whether I’d better. You see, I don’t know how well you know Tanis.”
    His face changed and hardened. He said deliberately,
    “I know her very well indeed.”
    Laura said an outrageous thing. She blushed for it afterwards. She even blushed for it at the time, but she said it.
    “Are you in love with her? Are you going to marry her?”
    The odd thing was that it didn’t seem outrageous until she had said it. It was somehow vitally necessary that she should know these things, and how was she going to know them if she didn’t ask him? She kept her eyes on his face and wondered whether he would be angry. And didn’t care, because she had to know.
    Carey said, “You can put it in the past tense, my dear.”
    “You mean you were in love with her?”
    “I thought I was—I thought I was going to marry her. But one doesn’t get beyond the thinking stage with Tanis.”
    Laura said another outrageous thing. It just seemed as if all the rules about what you said and didn’t say to a stranger had been blown away—perhaps on that fierce gust of anger. This time she said,
    “Will she marry Alistair?”
    Carey seemed to have scrapped all his rules too. A stranger—there was nothing strange between them. They were answering each other’s thoughts. He said,
    “She won’t marry anyone—not yet—not for a long time— not as long as she can get what she wants without paying for it.”
    Laura’s voice came back in a whisper.
    “What does she want?”
    She never took her eyes off him. His face was expressionless and controlled.
    “Oh, to see us all make fools of ourselves—to be the candle and watch the moths come up and burn their wings. She hasn’t got any use for them after that. She’s a bright candle, isn’t she?”
    Laura didn’t answer him—she hadn’t any voice. She didn’t know what was happening to her, but it hurt—it hurt horribly. Not for herself, but for Carey. The hurt came into her eyes and made a shadow there like the shadow of a cloud on water.
    He said quickly, “Don’t look like that. It doesn’t matter any more. Do you hear—there isn’t any Tanis. As far as I’m concerned the candle’s out.”
    Laura took a soft breath. She said on that breath,
    “She hurt you—dreadfully—” And Carey said,
    “It’s gone. It doesn’t matter any more. It never really mattered at all, because she doesn’t matter.” And then he laughed suddenly and said, “Look where we’ve got to!”
    They were in a narrow street with a mews opening on to it on one side, and a high building on the other, full of blind bricked-up windows.
    It was no use Laura looking, because she had no idea where they were, or how they had got there. She hadn’t even realized that they had stopped walking. She discovered now that they were standing on a narrow, dirty pavement just opposite the entrance to the mews. An errand-boy went by on a bicycle quickly, but otherwise the place seemed quite deserted. She said in a bewildered tone,
    “Where are we?”
    “I haven’t the slightest idea.”
    When they had emerged into a recognizable road and found a taxi Laura began to wake up. It felt just like that— as if she had been asleep and had one of those dreams which don’t make sense, but which leave you still charmed when you wake up and have