Lilian (Unabridged)
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This carefully crafted ebook: «Lilian (Unabridged)» is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Content : A beautiful young girl, was a typist, though not a contented typist. She yearned after a high, impossible ideal, which involved all the more vulgar luxuries so easily obtainable in exchange for cash. The typewriting office at which she was employed had been started by Felix Grig, a middle-aged man of means, as a hobby for his spinster sister. Miss Grig suspected that Felix was more interested in Lilian than he ought to be ; therefore, she gave Lilian the sack. But this ruse was unsuccessful, for Felix invited Lilian to dine at the expensive restaurant of her dreams and suggested a little trip to the Continent. Lilian accepted with alacrity and off they went. Thereafter, chapters celebrating the delights of prosperous indolence on the Riviera. Unhappily, after a few days of this delicious existence Felix catches a cold and Lilian discovers that she is going to have a baby. Felix's cold becomes pneu- monia ; but pneumonia or not, he gets up, marries Lilian, makes a will leaving her everything, and dies. Lilian, having assisted at the usual ceremonies, returns to England and lives happily or unhappily ever afterwards in Felix's town house. Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was an English journalist, novelist, and writer. After working as a rent collector and solicitor's clerk, Bennett won a writing contest which convinced him to become a journalist. He later turned to the writing of novels, including his most famous Clayhanger and Anna of the five towns.
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Arnold Bennett
(Unabridged)
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He had, then, been thinking about her all those months, differentiating her from the others, summing her up! And how well he had summed her up, and how well he had expressed himself--so romantically (somehow) and yet with such obvious truth! (Of course he had been having a dig at his own wife, who had divorced him! You could see how embittered he was on the subject of wives!) She wondered if he had thought her beautiful for long. Fancy him moving about the office and forming ideas about all of them, and never a sign, never the slightest sign that he could tell one of them from another! And he had chosen that night to reveal his mind to her. She was inexpressibly flattered. Because Mr. Grig was clearly a connoisseur--she had always felt that. If Mr. Grig considered her beautiful...!
And in fact she had an established assurance of beauty. She knew a good deal about herself. Proudly she reflected, amid her blushes, upon the image of her face and hair--the eyes that matched her hair, the perfectly formed ears, the softness of the chin and the firmness of the nose, the unchallengeable complexion, the dazzling teeth. She was simple enough to be somewhat apologetic about the largeness of her mouth, unaware that a man of experience flees from a small rosebud mouth as from the devil, and that a large mouth is the certain sign of goodwill and understanding in a woman. She was apologetic, too, about the scragginess of her neck, and with better reason. But the wrists and the ankles, the legs, the shoulders, the swelling of the hips, the truly astounding high, firm and abundant bosom! Beyond criticism! And she walked beautifully, throwing back her shoulders and so emphasizing the line of the waist at the back. She walked with her legs and hips, and the body swam forward above them. She had observed the effect thousands of times in street mirrors. The girls all admitted that she walked uniquely. Then, further, she had a smile (rarely used) which would intensify in the most extraordinary way the beauty of her face, lighting it, electrifying the eyes, radiating a charm that enraptured. She knew that also. A superlative physical pride rose up out of the subconscious into the conscious, and put her cheap pretty clothes to shame. It occurred to her that Mr. Grig had been talking very strangely, very unusually.
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