Four Strange Women Read Online Free Page A

showed against that strangely pale skin, and behind them he caught a glimpse of two rows of white, regular teeth, small and pointed. Her features seemed to him small, regular, undistinguished; and when she came into the room she gave him first a shy, embarrassed, almost apologetic smile, and then seemed to be trying to efface herself in a corner of the room, as if offering mute apology for being there at all. Bobby was aware of a momentary amusement as he contrasted this timid, insignificant little figure with the almost passionate adoration Lord Henry’s tones had managed to convey. Strange, he felt, that a girl whose presence could be so easily forgotten, as he indeed was already almost forgetting it, could awake so much devotion. He remembered vaguely a case he had once heard of in which a man of experience and social standing had fallen wildly in love with a little typist who struck everyone else as entirely insignificant, who had entirely failed to understand the man’s passion, who had indeed been merely frightened by it, so scared, in fact, that finally she had disappeared in a panic, whereon the man had committed suicide. Apparently this was a similar case, with the fortunate exception that Gwen Barton, whether she understood or not, appeared at any rate to be accepting the devotion offered her. Bobby hoped it would not turn out badly, that she would have sufficient character and self-control to live up to the part for which she had been cast, though he was not sure that the frightened air with which she seemed to wish to hide herself in the nearest corner was altogether promising in that respect. But Lord Henry had no idea of letting her efface herself like that.
    â€œNow then, Gwen,” he said, “don’t look so scared even if Owen is a policeman.”
    She came forward then, and Bobby noticed that she moved with an unusual, silent speed and certainty, hovering for a moment in her corner as if afraid to issue from it, and then across the room and by his side almost before he knew she had moved. Lord Henry muttered the usual formula of introduction, and she held out a small hand with long, curved, pointed crimson-tinted nails—coloured finger nails being apparently the only concession apart from the use of her brightly-coloured lipstick, she made to the prevailing craze for cosmetics, since the thin, almost transparent pallor of her skin seemed untouched by powder or rouge. Hitherto he had not noticed her eyes, hidden behind heavy, half-closed lids, and now when she looked up at him he thought how dull and almost lifeless they seemed, and yet with a pin point of light somewhere safely tucked away in their dark depths as if at any moment they might blaze into sudden, unexpected life. He took her hand and felt a kind of heat run through him from her grip, as from equally unexpected hidden fires. The vigour of that grip told him, too, that for all her slight build she possessed plenty of strength, nervous though, perhaps, rather than muscular. Something unusual about her, Bobby thought, if only one could find it out, but whatever it was, probably explaining and no doubt justifying the evident depth and sincerity of Lord Henry’s devotion. Now his deep voice boomed out:—
    â€œBeauty and the Beast, eh? that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” 
    Bobby wasn’t thinking anything of the sort, for ‘beauty’ was the last epithet he would have thought of applying to Gwen Barton. ‘Ordinary, insignificant, commonplace’ were more appropriate adjectives, he thought, except for that hint of something hidden in her, ‘burning bright’ within, as it were, that no doubt explained Lord Henry’s—‘infatuation’, was the word that came to Bobby but he felt it so obviously unfair that hurriedly he changed it in his mind to ‘passion’. Gwen was saying in her quiet little voice:—
    â€œI’ve heard such a lot about you,