The Perfect Man (ePub)

PRINCETON folded the record and thoughtfully balanced it on his palm. What an ironical antique international it come to be! There come to be a perpendicular wrinkle about his nose, and his lips had thinned into a trifling line which drooped at the corners. The drone of a type-writer withinside the adjoining room sounded above the rattle-tattle of the street below. Through the opened domestic home windows came a vague breath of summer season season redolent of flowers and grasses; for it come to be but eleven o'clock of the morning, and the heady fragrance of sun-baked brick and asphalt had now now not however risen through the air. Far beyond the smoking, ragged sky-line Princeton need to see the shifting, glittering river and the wonderful ships occurring to the sea. Presently the ashes from his vain cigar fell in a gray cascade down his coat and tumbled for the duration of his knees, but he gave no heed. Ironical antique international indeed! Here, unexpectedly and unexpectedly, he located himself upon the battle-challenge of love and responsibility, in which all honest men discover themselves, quicker or later. To pit the coronary coronary heart toward the conscience, impulse toward calculation! Heigh-ho! Duty is an implacable goddess, and those who serve her most loyally are most ruthlessly driven. She buffets us into this corner and into that, digs pitfalls for the hesitant foot, and crushes the vacillating.