Diana Ardway (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Diana's Chase YUAN-KAI bowed. "The Senor is served." No sooner seated where she could look into the fire than another lightning change to the wildest spirits swept over her, and she clapped her hands ecstatically, holding her still folded napkin. " Oh, this is going to be the nicest lunch I ever ate!" " This isn't lunch; it's almuerso, second breakfast, dejeuner a la fowchette." " Pardon, M'sieu! " And chattered on like a magpie in the most adorable French, such as comes only from soaking it in as a child on the spot. It was too good a chance to tune my accent to let slip, so I stuck to it. Since I was evidently fated to see this wild pixy now and then, I had better get some use out of her. And though I had lived in the Latin Quarter and haunted Fencing Clubs, I had nothing on Diana in idioms or slang. Her nurse had certainly taken her to some queer places! " What beautiful ferns! " she babbled on. " And, oh, look! There's a jack-in-the-pulpit actually growing between them! It's a perfect little fairy come out of the woods. I think this plain linen without any fussy damask pattern is so distinguished. I never saw it before." " Yes, I think patterns on table linen nearly as awful as crazy-quilt wall-papers of fool birds and flowers that just stand out and hit you in the eye." She shuddered sympathetically and glanced round. " How restful this green burlap is, and thatsoft gray in the hall! You simply forget there is a wall at all." " Admirably expressed, Diana. To forget there is a wall, ceiling, floor, furniture, is to achieve perfection in decoration; to expand bounds and limits to infinity, to sublimate the material into the ideal; in fact, almost to create atmosphere, without a long, long span of human action absorbed by the inanimate s...