Above her long, elegant neck her face was cold, sharp, and mocking; her cheeks were flushed from dancing. Mme. Boehmer smiled with melancholy delight as she looked at her daughter and thought, yet again, “How beautiful she is … so tall … her dress is charming.”She moved aside to allow some couples to linger under the bunch of mistletoe decorated with blue ribbons that hung over the entrance. She sighed. She was old. New Year’s Eve, with its music, dancing, and young voices, disturbed and depressed her. Her tired, blotchy face betrayed exhaustion and her disillusion with life, tempered by grudging relief that the year had brought neither death nor serious illness. She looked coldly at her daughter’s friends through her tortoiseshell-rimmed opera glasses. “What bad taste … all that makeup … and wearing jewelry that’s far too grown-up for them. Christiane is so different!”Christiane, surrounded by her friends, was about to leave. Her mother gestured to her to wait. But the girl was glancing around her with the hard, triumphant look of a young woman who views the world as a mirror in which she sees only her own image, made lovelier by the interest or desire of a man; in Christiane’s eyes Mme.
What do You think about Dimanche And Other Stories?
