Unable to live
with the rich he thought that his next choice would have been to live
with the very poor. Anything was better than this cup of perspiration
and tears.
The sense of the enormous panorama of life, never strong in Anthony, had
become dim almost to extinction. At long intervals now some incident,
some gesture of Gloria's, would take his fancy--but the gray veils had
come down in earnest upon him. As he grew older those things
faded--after that there was wine.
There was a kindliness about intoxication--there was that indescribable
gloss and glamour it gave, like the memories of ephemeral and faded
evenings. After a few high-balls there was magic in the tall glowing
Arabian night of the Bush Terminal Building--its summit a peak of sheer
grandeur, gold and dreaming against the inaccessible sky. And Wall
Street, the crass, the banal--again it was the triumph of gold, a
gorgeous sentient spectacle; it was where the great kings kept the money
for their wars....
... The fruit of youth or of the grape, the transitory magic of the
brief passage from darkness to darkness--the old illusion that truth and
beauty were in some way entwined.
Pages:
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564