"Love," she repeated, as though he had suggested installing a maypole in the drawing room. "Love is for people who have not discovered the pleasure of a well-attended inquest. Love is for the sort of people who send flowers to hospitals. Julian, I married you because you hated the same things I hated. If you start loving things, you will become indistinguishable from the common herd of humanity, and I shall have to divorce you."
Yours in mutual contempt, Julian
And if a certain lean, dark young man happened to be standing near the yew tree, well—that would be a coincidence. laura by saki pdf
The young man blinked. He was not accustomed to being liked at funerals. His name, it transpired, was Julian March, and by the time the last spadeful of earth had been thrown onto the general's coffin, he had agreed to walk Laura home. Egbert was horrified.
Julian began to linger too long at gravesides. He started talking about the "nobility of suffering" and the "quiet dignity of grief." He bought a black cat and named it Mourning. Laura was alarmed. "Love," she repeated, as though he had suggested
"On the contrary," said Laura, "he will complete me. He hates everyone I hate—the living, that is. The dead he treats with appropriate respect. Last Tuesday we went to a funeral together for a woman neither of us had heard of, and he held my hand through the entire service. It was more romantic than Venice."
Egbert winced. He had a sensitive soul, which Laura regarded as a kind of internal malformation, like a cleft palate of the character. Julian, I married you because you hated the
She rather liked coincidences.