Ecstasy

Начало книги

Dolf Van Attema, for an after-dinner walk, had taken the opportunity of calling on his wife’s sister, Cecile Van Even, in the Scheveningen Road. He was waiting in her little boudoir, walking to and fro among the rosewood furniture and the old moiré settees, over and over again, with three or four long steps, measuring the width of the tiny room. On an onyx pedestal, at the head of a chaise-longue, burned an onyx lamp, glowing sweetly within its lace shade, a great six-petalled flower of light.

Mevrouw was still with the children, putting them to bed, the maid had told him; so he could not see his godson, little Dolf, that evening. He was sorry. He would have liked to go upstairs and romp with Dolf as he lay in his little bed; but he remembered Cecile’s request, and his promise of an earlier occasion, when a romp of this sort with his uncle had kept the boy lying awake for hours.

So he waited, smiling at his obedience, measuring the little boudoir with his steps – the steps of a firmly-built man, broad and squat, no longer in his first youth, showing symptoms of baldness under his short, brown hair, with small blue-grey eyes, kindly and pleasant of glance, and a mouth which was firm and determined, in spite of the smile in the midst of the ruddy growth of his short Teutonic beard.

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