The Razor's Edge

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Book: The Razor's Edge Read Online Free PDF
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
at the time of the armistice.'
    'You're boring your mother's guests, Isabel,' said Larry.
    'I've known him all my life, and when he came back he looked lovely in his uniform, with all those pretty ribbons on his tunic, so I just sat on his doorstep, so to speak, till he consented to marry me just to have a little peace and quiet. The competition was awful.'
    'Really, Isabel,' said her mother.
    Larry leant over towards me.
    "I hope you don't believe a word she says. Isabel isn't a bad girl really, but she's a liar.'
    Luncheon was finished and soon after Elliott and I left. I had told him before that I was going to the museum to look at the pictures and he said he would take me. I don't particularly like going to a gallery with anyone else, but I could not say I would sooner go alone, so I accepted his company. On our way we spoke of Isabel and Larry.
    'It's rather charming to see two young things so much in love with one another,' I said.
    'They're much too young to marry.'
    'Why? It's such fun to be young and in love and to marry.'
    'Don't be ridiculous. She's nineteen and he's only just twenty. He hasn't got a job. He has a tiny income, three thousand a year Louisa tells me, and Louisa's not a rich woman by any manner of means. She needs all she has.'
    'Well, he can get a job.'
    'That's just it. He's not trying to. He seems to be quite satisfied to do nothing.'
    'I dare say he had a pretty rough time in the war. He may want a rest.'
    'He's been resting for a year. That's surely long enough.'
    'I thought he seemed a nice sort of boy.'
    'Oh, I have nothing against him. He's quite well born and all that sort of thing. His father came from Baltimore. He was assistant professor of Romance languages at Yale or something like that. His mother was a Philadelphian of old Quaker stock.'
    'You speak of them in the past. Are they dead?'
    'Yes, his mother died in childbirth and his father about twelve years ago. He was brought up by an old college friend of his father's who's a doctor at Marvin. That's how Louisa and Isabel knew him.'
    'Where's Marvin?'
    'That's where the Bradley place is. Louisa spends the summer there. She was sorry for the child. Dr Nelson's a bachelor and didn't know the first thing about bringing up a boy. It was Louisa who insisted that he should be sent to St Paul's and she always had him out here for his Christmas vacation.' Elliott shrugged a Gallic shoulder. 'I should have thought she would foresee the inevitable result.'
    We had now arrived at the museum and our attention was directed to the pictures. Once more I was impressed by Elliott's knowledge and taste. He shepherded me around the rooms as though I were a group of tourists, and no professor of art could have discoursed more instructively than he did. Making up my mind to come again by myself when I could wander at will and have a good time, I submitted; after a while he looked at his watch.
    'Let us go,' he said. 'I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists. We will finish another day.'
    I thanked him warmly when we separated. I went my way perhaps a wiser but certainly a peevish man.
    When I was saying good-bye to Mrs Bradley she told me that next day Isabel was having a few of her young friends in to dinner and they were going on to dance afterwards, and if I would come Elliott and I could have a talk when they had gone.
    'You'll be doing him a kindness,' she added. 'He's been abroad so long, he feels rather out of it here. He doesn't seem able to find anyone he has anything in common with.'
    I accepted and before we parted on the museum steps Elliott told me he was glad I had.
    'I'm like a lost soul in this great city,' he said. 'I promised Louisa to spend six weeks with her, we hadn't seen one another since 1912, but I'm counting the days till I can get back to Paris. It's the only place in the world for a civilized man to live. My dear fellow, d'you know how they look upon me here? They look
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