More lines of beauty

I'm still reading that book.

And I love this sentence!

'He knew he was giving off the mischievous contentment of someone left behind for an afternoon, sleepy hints that he might have got up to something but in fact had done the more enviable and inexplicable nothing.'

And these little gems as well:

'Nick said solemnly but feebly, "Well, he was beautiful to." "Exactly!' said Catherine. "People are lovely because we love them, not the other way round."'

'It came to Nick in a flash of acute nostalgia, as though he could never visit that scene of happiness again. He waited a minute longer, in the heightened singleness of someone who has slipped out for a minute from a class, a meeting, ears still ringing, face still solemn, into another world of quiet corridors, the neutral gleam of the day.'

'He couldn't unwind the line of beauty for Catherine, because it explained almost everything, and to her it would seem a trivial delusion, it would seem quite mad, as she said.'

'Some of them were pushy and explicit, but there was always the vulnerable note of courtship: they were asking an unknown man to like them, or want them, or find them equal to their self-description.'

.....................................................................

I've finished that book, and boy is it both so beautiful and scary.