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THE WINE OF LIFE
THE WINE OF LIFE
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Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original hardcover edition for enjoyable reading. (Worth every penny spent!)
***
An excerpt from the beginning of Chapter 10:
STORROW went home, but not to sleep. As he mounted the gloomy stairways that led to his studio he stopped suddenly, sniffing in the darkness. There was an unmistakable smell of gas about the building. That was one of the drawbacks, he mentally remarked, in living in those ramshackle old ruins. There was always the promise of defective plumbing, the evidence of repairs deferred. And somewhere, without a doubt, a pipe-joint had sprung a leak.
Once inside his studio, he crossed to the corner of the room where a panelled clothes-horse, covered with painted burlap, shut off from general view the kitchenette which held his small gas-stove. He switched on the light and examined this stove carefully, to make sure the leak was not within his own territory. There, however, he found nothing wrong. The air within the studio, in fact, was quite untainted.
Frowning, he advanced towards the oblong of tapestry on his wall. He threw back the imitation Gobelin and sniffed along the door cracks. This, however, did not satisfy him. Without giving actual thought to the movement he slipped back the metal bolt and tried the door.
His first surprise came with the fact that it opened. His second surprise lay in the discovery that the lights were on in Torrie Throssel's studio. And his third surprise took the form of Torrie Throssel herself, standing within three feet of him. She was wearing a man's bath-robe, which was much too big for her, doubled about her waist and held in by a girdle of plaited silk. Her preoccupied face, he noticed, was almost colourless. The studio behind her, he also noticed, impressed him as being over-lavish in its decorations, almost theatrical in its studiously achieved Orientalism.
" I've been waiting for you," she said, very quietly, and with a smile of slow constraint that was new to her.
More than ever before, as he stood staring at her, he was conscious of her appeal. But the preoccupation on her face disturbed him.
"Is anything wrong?" he asked, slowly moving through the open door. If that portal had once taken on to him the significance of a Rubicon, he seemed to have forgotten the fact.
" I'm worried," the girl told him. She lifted one shoulder, deprecatingly. " It may be foolish, but I can't get the thing out of my head."
"What thing?" asked Storrow. She lifted a hand as though to touch his arm, or to grope to him, if not for support at least for personal contact. But to his disappointment she changed her mind and drew the hand away again.
***
"The Wine of Life" has psychological sophistication, and Arthur Stringer has been hailed as an early realist!
***
An excerpt from the beginning of Chapter 10:
STORROW went home, but not to sleep. As he mounted the gloomy stairways that led to his studio he stopped suddenly, sniffing in the darkness. There was an unmistakable smell of gas about the building. That was one of the drawbacks, he mentally remarked, in living in those ramshackle old ruins. There was always the promise of defective plumbing, the evidence of repairs deferred. And somewhere, without a doubt, a pipe-joint had sprung a leak.
Once inside his studio, he crossed to the corner of the room where a panelled clothes-horse, covered with painted burlap, shut off from general view the kitchenette which held his small gas-stove. He switched on the light and examined this stove carefully, to make sure the leak was not within his own territory. There, however, he found nothing wrong. The air within the studio, in fact, was quite untainted.
Frowning, he advanced towards the oblong of tapestry on his wall. He threw back the imitation Gobelin and sniffed along the door cracks. This, however, did not satisfy him. Without giving actual thought to the movement he slipped back the metal bolt and tried the door.
His first surprise came with the fact that it opened. His second surprise lay in the discovery that the lights were on in Torrie Throssel's studio. And his third surprise took the form of Torrie Throssel herself, standing within three feet of him. She was wearing a man's bath-robe, which was much too big for her, doubled about her waist and held in by a girdle of plaited silk. Her preoccupied face, he noticed, was almost colourless. The studio behind her, he also noticed, impressed him as being over-lavish in its decorations, almost theatrical in its studiously achieved Orientalism.
" I've been waiting for you," she said, very quietly, and with a smile of slow constraint that was new to her.
More than ever before, as he stood staring at her, he was conscious of her appeal. But the preoccupation on her face disturbed him.
"Is anything wrong?" he asked, slowly moving through the open door. If that portal had once taken on to him the significance of a Rubicon, he seemed to have forgotten the fact.
" I'm worried," the girl told him. She lifted one shoulder, deprecatingly. " It may be foolish, but I can't get the thing out of my head."
"What thing?" asked Storrow. She lifted a hand as though to touch his arm, or to grope to him, if not for support at least for personal contact. But to his disappointment she changed her mind and drew the hand away again.
***
"The Wine of Life" has psychological sophistication, and Arthur Stringer has been hailed as an early realist!
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