The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Green Carnation, by Robert Smythe Hichens

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Title: The Green Carnation

Author: Robert Smythe Hichens

Release Date: February 2, 2008 [eBook #24499]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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THE GREEN CARNATION

New York
D. Appleton and Company
1894

Copyright, 1894,
by D. Appleton and Company.

I.

He slipped a green carnation into his evening coat, fixed it in its
place with a pin, and looked at himself in the glass, the long glass
that stood near the window of his London bedroom. The summer evening was
so bright that he could see his double clearly, even though it was just
upon seven o'clock. There he stood in his favourite and most
characteristic attitude, with his left knee slightly bent, and his arms
hanging at his sides, gazing, as a woman gazes at herself before she
starts for a party. The low and continuous murmur of Piccadilly, like
the murmur of a flowing tide on a smooth beach, stole to his ears
monotonously, and inclined him insensibly to a certain thoughtfulness.
Floating through the curtained window the soft lemon light sparkled on
the silver backs of the brushes that lay on the toilet-table, on the
dressing-gown of spun silk that hung from a hook behind the door, on
the great mass of gloire de Dijon roses, that dreamed in an ivory-white
bowl set on the writing-table of ruddy-brown wood. It caught the gilt of
the boy's fair hair and turned it into brightest gold, until, despite
the white weariness of his face, the pale fretfulness of his eyes, he
looked like some angel in a church window designed by Burne-Jones, some
angel a little blase from the injudicious conduct of its life. He
frankly admired himself as he watched his reflection, occasionally
changing his pose, presenting himself to himself, now full face, now
three-quarters face, leaning backward or forward, advancing one foot in
its silk stocking and shining shoe, assuming a variety of inte