The Price of Love a Tale A Tale Author:Arnold Bennett 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: Ill THE FEAST '"THE dramatic moment of the birthday feast came A nearly at the end of the meal when Mrs. Mal- don, having in mysterious silence disappeared... more » for a space to the room behind, returned with due pomp bearing a parcel in her dignified hands. During her brief absence Louis, Rachel, and Julian—hero of the night—had sat mute and somewhat constrained round the debris of the birthday pudding. The constraint was no doubt due partly to Julian's characteristic and notorious grim temper, and partly to mere anticipation of a solemn event. Julian Maldon in particular was self-conscious. He hated intensely to be self-conscious, and his feeling towards every witness of his self-consciousness partook always of the homicidal. Were it not that civilization has the means to protect itself, Julian might have murdered defenseless aged ladies and innocent young girls for the simple offense of having seen him blush. He was a perfect specimen of a throw-back to original ancestry. He had been born in London, of an American mother, and had spent the greater part of his life in London. Yet London and his motherseemed to count for absolutely nothing at all in his composition. At the age of seventeen his soul, quitting the exile of London, had come to the Five Towns with a sigh of relief as if at the assuagement of a long nostalgia, and had dropped into the district as into a socket. In three months he was more indigenous than a native. Any experienced observer who now chanced at a week-end to see him board the Manchester express at Euston would have been able to predict from his appearance that he would leave the train at Knype. He was an undersized man, with a combative and suspicious face. He regarded the world with crafty pugnacity from beneath frowning eyebrows. His expression sai...« less