The Heat of the Day Read Online Free PDF

So many people do know each other." "Absolutely, yes. But depends who the people are." His uneven eyes met hers, across the hoops of lamplight, the more intently for showing no change of expression. "Anything is a thought when one person is you," he said. "Girl I met asked me only this afternoon if I ever forgot a face: I said, sometimes. I was about right, I think--never a face that interests me. _There__," he said, eyeing the photograph, "is one case in point." "Indeed? Robert Kelway ought to be flattered." Harrison uttered a deprecating laugh. He then said: "Ever mentioned my name?" "You mean, has he mentioned your name to me?" "No; have you mentioned my name to him?" "I've no idea; I may have; really I don't remember." She paused and ground out her cigarette. "Look here," she said, "you asked yourself here this evening--it would not be too much to say that you forced your way in--because, you said, it was urgent that you should tell me something. Just exactly what have you come to say?" "As a matter of fact, that is what I've been getting round to. Now we've got there, I hardly know how to put it." She, on her side, could not have sat looking blanker. It was a trick of Harrison's to drop rather than raise his voice for emphasis: he thus now said ultra-softly: "You should be a bit more careful whom you know." "In general?" Stella returned, in a tone which by contrast was high and cool. He had, as though under instruction, kept his eyes on the photograph. "Actually, I did rather mean in particular." "But I am. For instance, I did not want to know you." He took two or three more pulls on his cigarette--perhaps to steady himself, perhaps not--before, still frowning with concentration, unloading more ash on to the Chinese tray. His mind was, where she was concerned, a jar of opaquely clouded water, in which, for all she knew, the strangest fish might be circling, staring, turning to turn away. She glanced at her wrist watch, glanced again at her letters, felt gooseflesh, bit off a nervous yawn. "That's not so much what I mean," he went on, "about taking care. Care should come in more where there's someone you do like knowing--with me, as you say, so far that does not apply. Good: that's that--for the moment. You shy off me because I am not your sort; you can't get me taped because you feel something's missing. I agree: there is--if you cared, I could tell you what. No, I'll tell you--vanity. That's been left out of my composition. You turn round one fine day, for instance, and tell me you can't abide me--after which that, you think, is the end of that." "Yes, I do. I imagine most people would." "Most people you know might. To me, that is simply one more thing that you say." "I can't help that," said Stella, "it's what I mean. You imagine everyone puts on acts?" "You think _I__ put acts on?" "I haven't even thought. I do not care what you do." "Neither do I," said Harrison promptly, pleased. "I don't care what I do. That's where it comes in--no vanity!" "I should have said, no feeling," she abstractedly said. (She was thinking, _was__ this to be, after all, all? Had he hinted and threatened his way in, his way back, for nothing more than one final bid at self-salesmanship, one last attempt to "interest" her? But then--this was itself a point--how had he known she had melodramatic fears? How had he guessed her to be a woman with whom the unspecified threat would work?) "Yes, it's that," she went on. "You can't understand feeling." "I don't understand fine feelings--if that's what you mean. Fine feelings, you've got to have time to have: I haven't--I only have time to have what you have without having time, if you follow me? You and the types you go with, if I may say so, still seem to fancy love makes the world go round. For me it's a bit of a spanner in the works." He directed a look past her, at some shadow behind her head. "You like to trust the people you like to know?" "I suppose so. Why?" "As to one of them, I could tell