Three Continents Read Online Free Page B

Everything with you is personal; as if nothing exists beyond your own little ego. You can’t—rise.”
    She made a vague movement with her hand, indicating some lofty height to rise to. It made me laugh—the idea of Lindsay rising. Jean laughed too. Lindsay spoke to both of us in a genuinely hurt voice: “I thought we were all agreedthat it was something extraordinary. And isn’t it about time that there was a Fourth World—that all these different elements got together—I mean us here, with all our—materialism,” she said, gesturing at her crowded dressing table, “and they with their—”
    â€œOh yes,” Jean said. “They’re very spiritual. Especially her; that Rani. With all her spiritual jewelry.”
    â€œIt’s absolutely no use talking to you, Jean Potts. I’m not going to say another word.”
    There was something so appealing in the way she clamped her pretty lips together that Jean couldn’t resist sitting beside her on the edge of the bed. Lindsay went on pouting—but flirtatiously now, in the reproachful little-girl way that she knew would get her anything she wanted from Jean; and Jean, her voice gruff with tenderness, said “I know I’m a bore.”
    â€œYou’re not a bore—but you are so stubborn and contrary. You make me so mad . I want us to do everything together, as a couple, and how can we when you say no to me all the time.”
    Jean brought Lindsay’s hand up to her lips and turned it over and kissed her palm. By this time neither of them cared about me, whether I wanted to donate our house to the Rawul’s movement or not.
    And I didn’t, not one bit, and it amazed me the way both Lindsay and Michael were so ready to toss it away. It was not that it was a beautiful house—it wasn’t—but it was one of the few big houses in the area that was still intact and still with the original owners. Lindsay’s great-grandfather had built it as a summer house for his Victorian family, which of course was very large and included a whole establishment of servants; and then her grandfather had installed things to suit his life-style, like a squash court and a billiard room, and had converted the stables into garages; and her father had built on another wing in what was the latest in modern comfort in the thirties; so architecturally the house was a mess. The grounds, however, were beautiful. The site was that of an early nineteenth-century Federal-type house, which the great-grandfather had torn down to rebuild to his Victorian taste; but he couldn’t ruin the grounds—the magnificent maplesand oaks and elms, which were much older than the house and as huge, the line of white birches at the edge of the lake, the lake itself stretching to the wooded shore opposite, the waterfall, the many nooks and arbors with little dead fountains where Michael and I used to hide, pretending not to hear the voices calling us in for meals. But Michael no longer seemed to care about any of it himself, and made me feel bad for caring as much as I did.
    He took me for a midnight row on the lake. We always did that when we had something very special to discuss. Since it was our way to commune in silence, these discussions usually took the form of gliding on the dark water, breaking up the moonlit reflections scattered over it, one of us rowing, the other brushing aside the overhanging branches where the lake began to flow between narrow overgrown banks on its way to the river into which it finally merged. We halted under a willow and lay there, splashing the water around a bit to see if we could disturb any fish.
    Michael said “It’s a good idea.” I didn’t say anything—by which of course he knew I didn’t agree. I hated to disagree with him, and especially here on this lake where we had spent such hours of our deepest communings. Nor did I really have any right to disagree,