Read Crome Yellow for Free Online Page B

considering the problem.
    Before he went down – patent leather was his final choice – he looked at himself critically in the glass. His hair might have been more golden, he reflected. As it was, its yellowness had the hint of a greenish tinge in it. But his forehead was good. His forehead made up in height what his chin lacked in prominence. His nose might have been longer, but it would pass. His eyes might have been blue and not green. But his coat was very well cut and, discreetly padded, made him seem robuster than he actually was. His legs, in their white casing, were long and elegant. Satisfied, he descended the stairs. Most of the party had already finished their breakfast. He found himself alone with Jenny.
    â€˜I hope you slept well,’ he said.
    â€˜Yes, isn’t it lovely?’ Jenny replied, giving two rapid little nods. ‘But we had such awful thunderstorms last week.’
    Parallel straight lines, Denis reflected, meet only at infinity. He might talk for ever of care-charmer sleep and she of meteorology till the end of time. Did one ever establish contact with anyone? We are all parallel straight lines. Jenny was only a little more parallel than most.
    â€˜They are very alarming, these thunderstorms,’ he said, helping himself to porridge. ‘Don’t you think so? Or are you above being frightened?’
    â€˜No. I always go to bed in a storm. One is so much safer lying down.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜Because,’ said Jenny, making a descriptive gesture, ‘because lightning goes downwards and not flat ways. When you’re lying down you’re out of the current.’
    â€˜That’s very ingenious.’
    â€˜It’s true.’
    There was a silence. Denis finished his porridge and helped himself to bacon. For lack of anything better to say, and because Mr Scogan’s absurd phrase was for some reason running in his head, he turned to Jenny and asked:
    â€˜Do you consider yourself a
femme supérieure
?’ He had to repeat the question several times before Jenny got the hang of it.
    â€˜No,’ she said rather indignantly, when at last she heard what Denis was saying. ‘Certainly not. Has anyone been suggesting that I am?’
    â€˜No,’ said Denis. ‘Mr Scogan told Mary she was one.’
    â€˜Did he?’ Jenny lowered her voice. ‘Shall I tell you what I think of that man? I think he’s slightly sinister.’
    Having made this pronouncement, she entered the ivory tower of her deafness and closed the door. Denis could not induce her to say anything more, could not induce her even to listen. She just smiled at him, smiled and occasionally nodded.
    Denis went out on to the terrace to smoke his after-breakfast pipe and to read his morning paper. An hour later, when Anne came down, she found him still reading. By this time he had got to the Court Circular and the Forthcoming Weddings. He got up to meet her as she approached, a Hamadryad in white muslin, across the grass.
    â€˜Why, Denis,’ she exclaimed, ‘you look perfectly sweet in your white trousers.’
    Denis was dreadfully taken aback. There was no possible retort. ‘You speak as though I were a child in a new frock,’ he said, with a show of irritation.
    â€˜But that’s how I feel about you, Denis dear.’
    â€˜Then you oughtn’t to.’
    â€˜But I can’t help it. I’m so much older than you.’
    â€˜I like that,’ he said. ‘Four years older.’
    â€˜And if you do look perfectly sweet in your white trousers, why shouldn’t I say so? And why did you put them on, if you didn’t think you were going to look sweet in them?’
    â€˜Let’s go into the garden,’ said Denis. He was put out; the conversation had taken such a preposterous and unexpected turn. He had planned a very different opening, in which hewas to lead off with, ‘You look adorable this morning,’ or