A Terrible Beauty Read Online Free Page B

welcomed her American bluntness when we discussed him, even, on this occasion, when she had declared that if he were anything but a fool he would have constructed in Italy a perfect reproduction of a Pompeian villa instead of burdening me with a house she called a Cycladic nightmare. She loved the villa, but loved more making overly dramatic statements that offered support for whatever agenda suited her in the moment.
    Leaving the journal open was just the sort of thing Margaret would find harmless and amusing. I remembered that she alone knew where I kept it—she had watched me wrap it in tissue and store it away—and teased me occasionally about it. I closed the volume without so much as reading a word, returned it to my dressing room, and gave it no further thought until weeks later, when I was standing on the deck of the steamer taking us from Brindisi to Corfu.
    The bright sky, a deep, crystalline blue prevalent in the Mediterranean, pulsed with beauty. The calm sea had let us slip into an easy rhythm on board, and the sun warmed us pleasantly against the occasional stiff breeze. Colin, who had deliberately left in London the smoke-colored spectacles I had purchased for him, leaned over the railing squinting, his dark hair tousled by the wind, his straw boater firmly in his hands rather than on his head. Jeremy and Margaret, leaning together conspiratorially, were sitting on a nearby bench evaluating the perceived merits of our fellow passengers.
    When a strong gust of wind caught my parasol, I turned around so that its delicate ribs would not be broken. As I moved, I saw a gentleman on the deck above the one on which we were standing. He was tall and slim, with an elegant slouch worthy of Jeremy’s best. His hat covered most of his hair, but I could see it was sandy-colored, and everything about him reminded me so violently of Philip that I gasped.
    â€œWhat is it?” Colin asked, turning away from the water to look at me. “You appear most unwell. Are you seasick?”
    â€œDo you see him? That gentleman there?” I pointed, but it was too late. “Never mind, he’s gone.”
    â€œWas it someone with whom we are acquainted or merely an individual with a taste in hats that you find shocking?” he joked.
    â€œNeither,” I said. “He … he could have been Philip’s twin. It took me by surprise is all.”
    Colin studied the passengers on both decks as best he could from where we stood, but saw no one who fit the description. “You are bound to think of him when we are on the way to his house in Greece. Do not let it make you sullen.”
    Two days later—after another boat and a long and dusty train ride—we settled happily into rooms at my favorite hotel in Athens, the Grand Bretagne in the Place de la Constitution, just across from the king’s palace. The square brimmed with orange trees and oleander, forming a pretty little park in the center of the city. For every European tourist one saw, there were a handful of Greeks, some in ordinary dress, but many in traditional garb, the colors and styles lending an exotic flair to the scene and reminding one how removed the place was from the rest of the Continent.
    Very little of Athens resembled the other capitals of Europe, first because of the scale of the city. It did not sprawl like the arrondissements of Paris or encompass the wide variety of neighborhoods to be found in London. The population of the British capital had totaled more than three million by the middle of our century, whereas the Athenians now, in 1899, numbered little more than a hundred thousand. More important, ancient monuments dominated Athens in a way not duplicated anywhere else in the world. Margaret might argue that Rome had more than its share of ruins, but I give those only a small measure of credit, as I find them inferior to what the Greeks had constructed centuries before.
    As anyone with even the barest knowledge