Lost trumpet

134
THE LOST TRUMPET
climbed with a dim suggestion of angry purpose
amid the blue and scarlet of a nightmare mountain-
range.
Below it was a scrawled inscription. Pelagueya
bent to read. “What is it ?”
“Life” I read, staring with some repulsion at the
filthy thing portrayed.
Then I raised my head. Our eyes met. The anger
went from Pelagueya’s. Twin armies with torches
and banners came dancing there. And suddenly our
laughter went echoing across the Esbekieh Gardens,
startling the neat tourists at their tables ; Pelagueya
clung to my shoulder and laughed, and the horrific
book of Esdras Quaritch slipped from my hand
and hit the ground again with a petulant, youthful
spite.
Subchapter ii
“Life was never quite so silly or unclean as that
—in its entirety.” Pelagueya had reclaimed the book
again; she was going to use it as a bed-book, she
said. She stood beside me at the Gardens’ entrance,
and gurgled again at memory of the illustration we
had just surveyed. “Poor boy—too horrifying to
be anything but funny. Anton !”
“Princess !”
“Still that ? My dear, you showed me all the
horror the world contained this afternoon. Real
horror—but even at its worst there were other
things ; memories of them only, perhaps, but these