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She looked very much alive. It was her aliveness, more than her beauty, which struck the predominant note.
Her expression changed, dimmed. Her eyes were no longer two burning points, they were dark dim pools.
Hercule Poirot foresaw that he was going to get a little tired of that particular phrase.
And although that derisive patronizing attitude was exactly the one which Hercule Poirot had aimed at inducing, nevertheless he found himself annoyed by it.
A vase of roses on a polished mahogany table. That hoary old set-piece. How then did Amyas Crale contrive to make his roses flame and burn with a riotous almost obscene life. The polished wood of the table trembled and took on sentient life.
‘I felt, all the time, that she didn’t really know what she was talking about. She was rattling these things off—things she’d read in books or heard from her friends—it was like a parrot. She was—it’s a queer thing to say—pathetic somehow. So young and so self-confident.’ He paused. ‘There is something about youth, M. Poirot, that is—that can be—terribly moving.’
all comes back to me, you know. Ghosts. Ghosts everywhere.’
Up two flights of stairs, feet sinking into soft pile carpets. Subdued flood lighting. Money, money everywhere. Of taste, not so much.
‘I am so interested, M. Poirot. Sit down and tell me what you want me to do?’ He thought: ‘But she isn’t interested. Nothing interests her.’ Big grey eyes—like dead lakes.
‘I’ve never been a hypocrite! There’s a Spanish proverb I’ve always liked. Take what you want and pay for it, says God. Well, I’ve done that. I’ve taken what I wanted—but I’ve always been willing to pay the price.’
Hercule Poirot said: ‘What you do not understand is that there are things that cannot be bought.’
He watched her, saw the animation rising in her eyes, saw a living woman take shape from a dead one.
‘They were a devoted couple. But he, of course, was a man.’ Miss Williams contrived to put into that last word a wholly Victorian significance.
‘Men have the best of this world. I hope that it will not always be so.’
It is always better to face the truth. It is no use evading unhappiness by tampering with facts.
those who might have been said to start with the fullest advantages were not those who had actually wrested the most success and happiness from life.
She had that enormous mental and moral advantage of a strict Victorian upbringing denied to us in these days—she had done her duty in that station of life to which it had pleased God to call her, and that assurance encased her in an armour impregnable to the slings and darts of envy, discontent and regret.
She felt (and I think, psychologically quite truly) that if she were violent enough in speech she would have no temptation to violence in action.
Of course Caro and Amyas quarrelled! Of course they said bitter and outrageous and cruel things to each other! What nobody appreciates is that they enjoyed quarrelling.
She had no doubts, no qualms—no pity either. But can one expect pity from radiant youth? It is an older, wiser emotion.
I understand how Roman women felt when they saw a man die. Men aren’t much, but animals are splendid.’
One must have the courage to face reality. Without that courage, life is meaningless. The people who do us most harm are the people who shield us from reality.
